


What's So Civil About War Anyway?

by icbiwf



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, American Civil War, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icbiwf/pseuds/icbiwf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Panem, Pennsylvania, 1862: When all of her trading partners in town leave to join the Union army, Katniss Everdeen supports her family the only way she can: by enlisting to serve herself. Hoping desperately to avoid anyone from home who might recognize and expose her, what happens when she's assigned to the same company as the boy with the bread?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story began as a Prompts in Panem submission for their "Everlark at War" day, but it took on a life of its own and I decided to turn it into a multi-chapter fic. This first chapter should be enough to establish Peeta and Katniss and where they both are at the start of the story. I have a definite arc and a definite ending for this story but now that I'm not trying to limit it to one-shot length I'll probably add more meat the the middle, and more HG characters.

_August 25, 1862_

Her plan was perfect. There were already rumors of other women secretly joining up to fight. She knew she was tough enough to serve in the army. She knew that with her hair cut short she could pass for one of the teenage boys signing up. She knew that her army pay would be enough to support Prim and their mother, something she couldn't do now that all trade in town had dried up amidst war worries. Trade had been growing scarce ever since the disaster at Bull Run a year earlier, but Lincoln's draft order earlier in the month had been the death knell for her ability to trade in town.

The really brilliant part, the part she had taken time to pat herself on the back about, was leaving her small hometown of Panem, Pennsylvania and traveling to the state capitol to join a volunteer regiment. Everyone from Panem was serving in the 47th Pennsylvania, and if she tried to join that regiment they'd recognize her in an instant. Gale in particular would expose her just to make sure she got sent home; he always had been overprotective. But by volunteering and going to the capitol, she wound up filling a spot in the First Volunteers. She shouldn't encounter anyone who might recognize her form home.

The idea was so perfect that someone else had already done the same thing.

"Mellark!" Captain Abernathy bellowed as he entered the tent. "Meet your new bunkmate. Peeta Mellark, Kat Everdeen. The two of you'll be bunking till we string up Jeff Davis. Or till one of you dies, I guess. But don't do that. Stay alive."

Captain Abernathy sure had a way of inspiring his troops.

…..

"Well, never expected to see you here."

Katniss gave him a hostile look. "What are you talking about?"

Peeta raised his hands, as if in surrender. "Come on, you don't need to pretend with me. I know we're not exactly friends back home, but you don't need to treat me like the enemy. 'Kat.'"

A tine flame of hope sprang to life in her soul. "You mean you won't turn me in?"

He looked shocked at the idea. "Of course not! Why on earth would I do that?"

"I'm not allowed to be here," she said vaguely. She didn't dare state the truth; they were only in a tent, who knew who might be listening from outside.

"It's life and death out here, Kat," he said, trying to get himself used to using the name. "You'll find that not many folks care about what's allowed. For instance, Haymitch is a drunk."

"Haymitch?"

"Captain Abernathy."

She was horrified. "Our captain is a drunk?"

Peeta smiled at her reaction. "Yep. Don't let that affect your opinion of him, he's handy on the battlefield. Just don't expect him to be coherent later that night."

Katniss shook her head. "Sounds like I have a lot to learn about being in the army."

"Here's hoping you'll get the chance to learn it," Peeta said.

It wasn't until he saw her horrified expression that he realized what he'd just said. "Sorry," he said timidly. "Gallows humor. You'll be more comfortable with it after a few battles." He decided to change the subject. "Will you tell me what happened at home that you're here now? I can't imagine you left Prim willingly."

Katniss debated whether or not to answer. She decided that keeping Peeta as an ally would probably help her survive this mess. "What happened was that everyone left. There weren't enough people left in town to keep supporting Mom and Prim by trading game, and certainly no one willing to give a job to a woman."

"But they could live on a soldier's pay," Peeta finished for her. "Wow. You literally went to war for your family."

Katniss scowled. "Don't mock me."

Peeta's eyes went wide in surprise. "Who's mocking you? I'm in awe."

"You're just saying that to poke fun at me," Katniss said sullenly.

"I'm saying it because it's true," Peeta protested. "You've dedicated your entire life to taking care of your family, when by all rights at your age your family should still be taking care of you, and now you've literally put yourself into a war just to make sure they have enough. Do you honestly not see how remarkable you are?"

Katniss was uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading, as she always was when she received compliments. So she changed the subject. "What about you? When you vanished last year there was some talk that you'd joined the army, but nobody's heard anything about you since then. It's like you fell off the face of the earth."

"I'm hiding from my mother," he said sheepishly. "She would never allow one of her sons to do anything so common as serve in the army, so I snuck away to the capitol to enlist. If she knew where I was, she'd get her cousin the senator to get me out, or get me transferred to a unit guarding the Canadian border or something. What about you, who are you hiding from?"

"Everyone," she said. "Most everyone from Panem is in the 47th, I wouldn't last two seconds in there before someone recognized me." She paused to consider him. She hated owing people, and she already owed this Peeta Mellark so much. Now she owed him even more for not turning her in. "Peeta, I don't know how I can ever repay you for not turning me in."

"You don't owe me anything."

"Of course I do! This was the only way I could earn enough money to support Prim and my mother. With your discretion, you're literally saving their lives." After a moment, she added in a soft voice, "Again."

"Again?" he questioned.

"You probably don't remember this, but a few years ago, you gave me some bread-"

"Of course I remember," Peeta cut her off. "It was right after your father died, and you looked like you were going to drop at any moment. How could I forget that?"

"You never mentioned it," Katniss said.

"Didn't think it was my place to," Peeta said. "Figured if you wanted to talk about it you'd bring it up, and if not I wasn't going to force you."

Katniss was floored for a moment. _He_ had saved _her_ life, and then _he_ was careful not to make _her_ uncomfortable about it? People that nice didn't really exist, did they?

"Katniss, you don't owe me anything for the bread."

"That bread was the first food we'd had in days. Me, my mother, Prim, none of us would be alive right now if it wasn't for that bread. I'll never stop owing you for that."

"If you really think you owe me, then here's what you can do for me: Stop acting like you owe me. I gave you that bread because I wanted to help you. You just said that it helped you. Good; that's my reward."

"But-"

"Tell you what, can we at least table this discussion until after you've been in your first battle? After that, we'll each owe each other our lives so many times over that you'll lose count."

…..

_October 5, 1862_

He was right.

Less than a month after "Kat" Everdeen joined the First Pennsylvania Volunteers, she got her first real taste of battle, at Antietam Creek in Maryland. There had been a few small skirmishes before that, and each one had filled her with a terror she hadn't felt since that day in the rain, when she had been ready to die, until an angel appeared with two loaves of burned bread. _This is what it feels like when you're about to die_ , she realized, and she knew she was going to have to get used to the feeling if she was going to last long in this war.

But then, she still had that same angel with her. Peeta had been right about Antietam, after the chaos of battle she owed her life to all of her fellow soldiers, and they all owed their lives to her, and there was no way to account for all the owing. And somehow that only made her feel more indebted to Peeta Mellark, because in the middle of the chaos he was an anchor she could cling to. Something from home to remind her that this wasn't all some surreal nightmare.

But she didn't talk about it anymore. For all that he was helping her, from keeping her secret to keeping her sane to being a soothing presence when she woke up from terrifying nightmares about the battle, she could at least do him the favor of not bringing up the one subject he had said he didn't want to discuss. So she didn't talk to him about it anymore. But she didn't stop feeling like she owed him.

It had been several weeks since Antietam, and they hadn't seen any major action since then. She and Peeta were sitting around the fire with several other members of the First Volunteers. They were an odd bunch, but Katniss decided she liked most of them.

In his mid-30s, Caesar was the old man of the group, with hair so black that it almost looked blue in the firelight. She didn't even know his first name, he never used it and neither did anyone else. He was a gregarious guy, always helping the younger guys feel at ease. And when he and Peeta started going back and forth with each other, the entire company sat back to watch the show.

Doc Aurelius was another good guy. He was quiet and kept to himself, and Katniss could respect that. He was a doctor back home, but had wound up with the First instead of the medical corps. Peeta had suggested that she tell Doc Aurelius about her situation; getting injured and sent to the medics was the most likely way of her being found out, and having a doctor who could treat her in confidence might help prevent that. Katniss wasn't sure she was ready to trust him that much, though.

Andrew Cato and Jonathan Marvel were the careers: newly-minted Lieutenants fresh from West Point, not enlistees like the rest of the company. They couldn't stand the disorganized, slovenly, drunken Captain they'd been assigned to serve under, and Haymitch wasn't too fond of them either. They mostly kept to themselves, rather than take out their frustrations on the enlistees they were technically in charge of.

Katniss couldn't help but think of some of the people missing from their gathering. Jackson, Mitchell, Homes, and Messalla had all been lost at Antietam. She had barely been here a month and was already losing friends and comrades.

Right now the focus was on Finnick Odair, the veteran. He had been a career officer like Cato and Marvel, he had graduated from West Point in '54, but quit the army four years later to settle down when his wife, Annie, became pregnant with their first child. He had re-enlisted when the war began, but for reasons he wouldn't go into he hadn't been restored to his previous rank. Haymitch treated Finnick more like a legitimate junior officer than he did Cato and Marvel.

Caesar liked to get Finnick talking about Annie and the kids, because it completely transformed the man. Odair normally maintained a cocky bravado, but it completely disappeared when he talked about his family. Whatever else the man was, it was obvious that he loved his wife and kids.

Eventually Caesar tired of Finnick and turned his attention to Katniss. "What about you, lad, you got a girl back home? Or is it too early for that quite yet?"

Due to "his" appearance, many of the men thought Kat Everdeen was a very young teenager who had skirted the age limits to enlist. She and Peeta encouraged this view, because it was better they think that than stumble upon the truth, but it did become insulting sometimes. "No, no girls for me yet," she told him.

Caesar smiled at her. "Well, just wait till you go home after the war. Then you'll be a dashing war hero, you'll have to beat the girls off with a stick!" They all laughed at that. Katniss gave them her best fake smile.

"What about you, Mellark?" Caesar asked next. "Do you have a girlfriend back home?" As usual, the rest of the men fell silent to watch the Caesar and Peeta show.

Peeta smiled sadly. "No, no girlfriend for me, either."

"Come on," Caesar said in a teasing tone. "Handsome guy like you? There must be some special girl." Peeta shook his head to deny it, but his blush gave him away. "Come on, what's her name?" Caesar asked.

"Well, there is this one girl," Peeta finally admitted. "I've had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But she barely knows I'm alive."

"She have another fellow?" Caesar asked him.

"No, I don't think she does. But I'm hardly the only guy interested."

"So, here's what you do," Caesar said. "Same thing as Everdeen here, once we win, you're a hero. She can't turn you down then, eh?"

"Come on, Caesar," Peeta said. "I'm hardly a hero."

"Well, we all know that. But that doesn't mean you can't be a hero to your special lady!" Caesar said with a conspiratorial wink, earning laughs from everyone.

Later, when Peeta and Katniss were in their tent bedding down for the night, for some reason Katniss couldn't get the conversation out of her mind. She kept trying to figure out who Peeta might have been talking about. Pretty much all of the girls from town were aware of the kind, handsome baker's son. There weren't a lot of people in Panem who could be assured of being well fed; marrying the town baker held quite the appeal for many. And regardless of whether they were interested or not, there was only one bakery in Panem, and Peeta had worked there every day for as long as Katniss could remember. So how could anyone barely notice him, like he said this girl did?

Eventually Peeta caught her staring, and asked what was going on. She had no choice but to confess. "I'm trying to figure out who this girl of yours is. There aren't that many girls in Panem, I thought I should be able to figure it out."

Peeta smiled sadly. "I promise you, it's the last person you would ever think of."

Katniss wracked her brain for a minute, before coming up with the last person she would ever think of. "Oh my god, it's not Prim is it?"

Truly, that was the last person Peeta would ever think of as well. "What? No! No, not Prim! Jesus, isn't she like 13?"

"14," Katniss corrected him.

"Still a bit young for me, don't you think?"

"You said the last person I would ever think of."

"Yeah, well, since you've thought of Prim but not the right person, I'm still right about that."

Katniss thought for a bit longer, still not coming up with any suitable candidates. "They're right, you know," she said eventually, just to make conversation. "Every girl in town is going to be looking to land herself a war hero."

"Not every girl," Peeta said, his voice laced with more meaning than Katniss was able to draw from the statement. "Besides, I'm not a hero."

Peeta sounded so sad when talking about this girl, for some reason she wasn't quite willing to analyze Katniss wanted to cheer him up, to give him hope with his girl the way he had given her hope with the bread all those years ago. "Peeta, when we go home, everyone who fought will be a war hero. And if you're not, just make something up! You have such a talent with words. I'm sure you can tell some stories that will make your girl swoon."

Peeta just shook his head. "No, I could never lie to this girl about my war experience. That wouldn't help in my case."

"Why ever not?"

Peeta appeared to be fighting with himself. Was he about to tell her who this mystery girl was? "Why not, Peeta? You can trust me. You've kept enough of my secrets."

Finally Peeta answered, his eyes fixed on the tent above them. "Because…" He had to stop for just a moment before he could finally say it. "Because she came here with me."

The tent was dead silent. It was almost three full minutes before either of them spoke. "I'll thank you not to mock me, Peeta Mellark," Katniss said, her voice full of acid.

It was her tone of voice that finally got Peeta to look her in the eyes. Those big, beautiful silver eyes that he had never had the nerve to look into for more than a second before flitting his gaze away in embarrassment. "I'm not mocking you, Katniss," he said, using her real name for the first time since she had shown up in camp.

"Why else would you say such a preposterous thing?"

"Because it's true," Peeta said matter-of-factly. "I just said I could never lie to you."

"That itself is a lie!" Katniss struggled to control her voice, not wanting to attract the attention of anyone outside their tent. "I do not understand what sick amusement you're getting from this game, but I'd ask you to quit it!"

Peeta stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Oh, I should have expected this."

"Expected what?"

He looked back at her. "You're so loath to see the good in yourself, that you're angry at me because I do see it!"

Katniss didn't even know how to deal with that statement. She was afraid that if she tried to argue, he'd start listing off all this supposed good he saw in her, so she changed the subject. "If this crush of yours is real, how long have you been harboring it, exactly?"

"Since we were five," he answered without hesitation.

Katniss almost choked. "Since we were _five?_ "

"You don't remember our first day of school, do you?" Kids in Panem didn't get much schooling; whether from a mining family or a merchant family in town, most kids went to work young. But they did have a schoolhouse, where Miss Trinket made sure that every child in Panem got at least a few years of formal instruction in writing and mathematics. "You were wearing a red plaid dress, and you had your hair in two braids back then. My father actually pointed you out to me when he dropped me off that morning. He said, 'See that little girl over there? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"

"What?" Katniss truly didn't know whether to believe him or not. She did wear her hair in two braids when she was younger, and she did remember a red plaid skirt she had when she was a child. But the baker and her mother? Impossible! "That's not true, about your father and my mother. It can't be."

"Well, that's what he told me. I even asked him, 'Why did she marry a coal miner when she could have had you?' And he told me, 'Because when he sings, even the birds stop to listen.'"

Katniss fought hard to stop the tears that wanted to fill her eyes. That was a low blow, bringing up her father's truly angelic singing voice. She could still remember their trips through the forest, when it seemed like the whole world quieted itself to make way for his voice. "That's true," she choked out, "they do. I mean, they did."

Peeta noticed her distress, but he had the decency to not mention it. "Well, that day, we had a music assembly. Miss Trinket asked if any of the new students knew the valley song, and your hand shot right up in the air. She stood you at the front of the room, and you sang, and I swear every bird outside fell silent. And somehow I just knew, just like your mother, I was a goner as soon as I heard you sing."

Katniss felt a few tears slip. It really was a beautiful story that Peeta was telling, it only proved her point that he could probably woo any girl he set his sights on. Perhaps the most distressing part was how much Katniss wanted it to be true, how much hearing this story of young love and devotion made her want to it for herself. But deep down she knew that it couldn't be true. Nobody as good and kind and noble as Peeta Mellark would give a second look sullen, starving, scowling Katniss Everdeen. He could have any girl in town, why would he waste his time with the surly daughter of a dead coal miner? She wished he would just give up this cruel game of trying to make her feel valued, and finally admit that she wasn't.

For his part, Peeta again ignored any distress he noticed. "That day, when we had our lunch break, I actually worked up the nerve to talk to you. I'll always remember that, because it was the only real interaction we had until you started trading at the bakery." Peeta smiled a small, sad smile, remembering his first interaction with Katniss Everdeen. Katniss didn't understand it until he continued. "I spent about five minutes working up my nerve, then I walked up to you and asked if I could sit with you. Once I sat down, you just stared at me, and my throat closed up and I didn't know what to say. I had an apple tart for lunch that day, so I pulled it out and I offered you half of it. You said to me, and I quote, 'I don't need your charity,' and you got up and walked away. We didn't speak again for seven years."

Katniss just shook her head. It was practically the perfect example of why no one could feel for her the things Peeta claimed to feel for her. She was mean, standoffish, surly, and if anyone ever tried to work past any of that she immediately pushed them away. The only person she hadn't pushed away was Gale, and that was only because she needed a hunting partner at the time.

Peeta was done with his story, but Katniss didn't have anything to say that she hadn't already said, so they sat in increasingly uncomfortable silence. Finally, after what felt like forever, Peeta spoke again. "Katniss I'm sorry." The statement grabbed her attention like no other could have; was he finally going to admit his cruel deception? "I didn't mean to dump everything onto you like this. I know, um, I know you don't feel for me the same things I feel for you. And that's fine, I don't expect you to. Please don't feel like I expect anything from you. Truthfully, I wasn't even planning on saying anything, but you were asking about it and you were so persistent, and I've been dreaming for thirteen years what it would be like to tell you I love you, I- I just couldn't hold it all back anymore. I know I've made you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry."

As if this conversation couldn't get any more uncomfortable, now Peeta had thrown the word _love_ at her. Katniss was beyond wanting Peeta to take it all back now; now she just wanted this conversation to end. She needed to stop this before it got any worse.

Peeta seemed to be waiting for some response from her, and eventually she gave him one. "You were right. It was the last person I ever would have thought of."

After a moment of dead silence, Peeta let loose his laughter. It was more than laughter, it was all the tension of the entire conversation being released. Peeta understood the message Katniss was sending with that remark, even if Katniss didn't fully understand it herself. _Okay, fine, whatever. I don't want this to change anything between us._ That was fine with Peeta, it was actually a better reaction to his revelation than he ever would have hoped for.

"Told you so," he said in response.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning on this chapter: This chapter gets a bit rough at times. There is mention (but not description) of rape and underage sexual abuse, a la Mockingjay and 14-year-old Finnick Odair. This chapter also has some of the characters using period-appropriate terms to refer to African-American characters, terms that are now considered, at best, outdated and inappropriate.

_February 22, 1863_

"Hey, Captain Marvel, what's going on?"

The new company commander turned to regard Katniss and Peeta. Lieutenant Marvel had become Captain Marvel just a few weeks prior, when Captain Abernathy had become Major Abernathy. Marvel was okay as far as careers went; the only one who had any real problem with his promotion was Lieutenant Cato, who felt he had deserved the spot over Marvel. Lieutenant Odair had great fun riling Cato up about it.

There was some kind of commotion going on that had drawn Katniss and Peeta out of their tent, but they were too far away to see what it was. They waited for their Captain to explain. "You guys know Joe Mason from the 32nd Maine?" Marvel asked them.

Katniss just shook her head. "I was on forage duty with him once, if I'm thinking of the right guy," Peeta answered, remembering the small man with a no-nonsense attitude and wide-set brown eyes. "He could turn a tree into firewood in three minutes flat, man was amazing with an axe."

Captain Marvel snickered. "Yeah, well maybe you should have looked a little closer, Mellark." He left them in confusion for a moment before continuing. "Turns out Joe Mason was actually a girl named Jo _hanna_ Mason. Came down with camp fever and the medics discovered her, ah, little secret."

"Must be a different guy," Peeta covered quickly. "The soldier I'm thinking of was a big, broad-shouldered guy with a long black beard."

"Yeah, didn't think even you were that blind," Marvel said with another snicker. "Imagine that, having a woman in your company and nobody noticing!" He walked away, still laughing at the idea.

Peeta and Katniss exchanged worried looks. They had to talk to Doc Aurelius.

…..

_May 12, 1863_

This was supposed to be a fairly easy mission. They had reports that several large farms in this area were storing weapons intended for the Confederate army. The First had been sent to clear out any Confederate sympathizers amongst the landowners in the area. Weapons were to be seized, slaves were to be liberated, and any food stores that they came across would be a welcome relief from army rations.

There weren't very many large slaveholders in this part of Virginia – which was part of the reason why in just over a month this wouldn't even be part of Virginia anymore, as the admission of West Virginia to the union became official – but what they'd found at the Snow Estate had turned their stomachs.

They'd all heard stories of the mistreatment that slaves sometimes received, but the brutality they found amongst the former Snow slaves was beyond their imaginings. Men, women, and children, all viciously beaten. Whole families starved. Women raped. And of course, the scars. Scars from beatings, scars from whippings. Lasting reminders of the cruelty people were capable of inflicting on one another.

One particularly tall, broad man with a back full of criss-crossing scars was standing next to Lieutenant Cato as Cato yelled up into a tree. They were trying to move everyone they found on the property into one group so they could make an accurate count, and also to keep them under watch in case any of them were dangerous. It was Cato's yelling that first attracted Katniss's attention. Apparently someone was up the tree and reluctant to come down. When Cato climbed partway up the tree only to snap a branch and fall back to the ground, Katniss laughed so hard Peeta came over to see what had happened to her.

Peeta. There was a conundrum she hadn't figured out. Several months ago he had said that he loved her, but he hadn't mentioned anything about it since then. Did that mean that it wasn't true? Or that it at least wasn't true anymore? Or was it just that he knew that the subject made her uncomfortable, and Peeta Mellark was just the right combination of considerate and masochistic that he would work side-by-side everyday, not to mention share a tent every night, with the woman he loved without ever bringing it up?

Deep down, Katniss knew which one was true.

But as self-sacrificing as Peeta was to go through every day hiding his love, Katniss was selfish enough to let him. It was just another example of why he deserved someone better than her. She had no idea how to handle the situation, so just like when he didn't bring up the bread for seven years, so long as he didn't bring up his love then she could ignore it and pretend it didn't exist.

Except, if she was being honest with herself, that's not what she was doing, was she? No, she was only ignoring it by day, but actively taking advantage of it at night when the nightmares hit. Ever since Antietam she'd had horrible nightmares about the battle, about dying in battle, about Prim dying in battle, and though she would never admit it, sometimes about Peeta dying in battle. Peeta had nightmares too, though his didn't seem to affect him as badly. But they both found that having someone there to wake them, someone to let them know that they were safe, someone to tell them that it wasn't real, was a huge assistance in dealing with the nightmares. And she knew that the reason having her there was such a help to him was because he loved her, and she knew that the reason why he was always there for her was because he loved her. But she never said anything, because she didn't know what to say. And he never said anything, because he didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable. So nothing was ever said. They'd cry together at night and then pretend the next morning that nothing had ever happened, and that was the extent of their relationship. Hell, could they even call it a relationship?

_Peeta probably did_ , she thought, feeling guilty all over again.

Cato's shouting was only getting louder. The two of them decided to go see if they could help him out.

"I'm warning you one last time, get down here you little wretch!" They could see the colored man next to Cato was barely containing his rage. Obviously he didn't care for Cato's treatment of whoever was up that tree. Cato was oblivious.

"Having trouble, Lieutenant?" Peeta called out as they approached.

Cato huffed out a breath. "We've got 120 of these people rounded up by the back barn, no problem, but this one little bitch wants to hide up a tree!" He lifted his head to return to yelling up the tree. "You know we're here to help you, you ungrateful little-"

" _Cato_ ," Peeta interrupted him. "Why don't you let Kat and me take a crack at this? You can get back to more important issues." If you wanted something out of Cato, stroking his ego was usually the way to go.

"Fine," he agreed, "you waste your time here. I do indeed have more important things to do." He stomped off without a second look.

"Sorry about Cato," Katniss said to the large man. "He's a bit of a jerk sometimes."

"I noticed," the man replied in a deep voice, then resumed his silence.

"I'm Kat Everdeen, this is Peeta Mellark."

The man eyed them for what felt like a long time. "Thresh," he finally said.

Katniss peered up the tree, but she had to squint to get a glimpse of the girl up there through the foliage. Whatever her story was, she was a hell of a tree climber. As good as Katniss herself.

"Mr. Thresh-" Peeta began.

"Just Thresh."

"Okay, _Thresh_ ," Peeta started again, "Can you tell us who is up this tree?"

It's another long moment before Thresh answers. "Her name's Rue."

"Are you related?"

"Not by blood," Thresh answered. "I've been sort of watching over her since Master Snow bought her. Not that I could really do anything to protect her," he added bitterly.

"So why is Rue up this tree instead of over by the barn getting checked out by our medics and eating some of the smoked pork Snow left behind like everyone else is?" Peeta asked.

Thresh gave him a long, appraising look before answering. "She doesn't like being around white men. Gives her fits. She's been through a lot."

"More than everyone else?" Peeta asked.

"Yes," was all Thresh said in answer.

Katniss marveled that someone with those kinds of scars on their back could stand there and say that someone else had been through a lot. "If I climb up there, will she talk to me? Or just run away to another tree?"

Thresh snorted. "You can't climb as high as she can."

"Yes I can," Katniss said matter-of-factly. There was no bragging or bravado in her tone, she was merely stating a fact.

The quiet confidence in her voice prompted Thresh to spend another long moment staring at her, as if he was reappraising her. Whatever he saw made him decide to answer her. "Told you, she can't be around a white man. She'll freak out, run, find a new hiding place."

"Why?" she asked.

Thresh didn't respond to her question. Peeta tried again. "Thresh, I know Cato was an asshole, but he was right about one thing: We do need Rue to come down eventually. Please, maybe if we knew why she was so afraid of us, we could do something to defuse the whole situation."

"Ain't nothing you can do but leave her alone," Thresh said.

"You don't know that," Peeta insisted. "You don't know what we can do."

"How old is Rue?" Katniss asked after Thresh didn't respond to Peeta.

"Fourteen."

"My sister's fourteen."

"Your sister hasn't been through what Rue has."

"How do you know that?" Katniss challenged. "You know about as much about my sister as we know about Rue."

Thresh just resumed his silence. "Tell us how to help her," Katniss asked him.

"There's nothing any white man can do for her," he said. "She won't let you."

"What if I wasn't a man?" Katniss asked. She was greeted by equally shocked expressions from both of the men with her.

"Kat…" Peeta began, but Katniss didn't let him finish.

"What if I only pretended to be a man so they'd let me in the army? What if I was actually a woman named Katniss?" She could see the anguish on Peeta's face; he was convinced that she was about to be sent home. But something in her told her that she could trust this Thresh, that he was an honorable man who would reciprocate the trust she was putting in him by telling him her secret. At least she hoped he was; Thresh's face was as guarded and stoic as Peeta's was expressive. "What if I've been raising my sister practically on my own since I was eleven so I have a particular empathy towards girls her age who have faced hardships in their lives? What if I trusted you enough to tell you all of that?" She gave Thresh a stare just as hard as his own. "What then?"

The silence hung heavily between them. Peeta didn't dare break into whatever staredown Thresh and Katniss were having.

Finally Thresh spoke. "Snow… _sold_ her."

Katniss and Peeta exchanged a quick look. What could be so bad about that? Wasn't being sold by one owner to a new one just part of being a slave? From what they had seen, being sold away from Snow would probably have been a good thing.

"Was this recently?" Peeta asked. "I mean, why is she still here if Snow sold her away?"

Thresh shook his head. "You don't understand. He didn't sell her like that. He sold her to _men_. Like a _whore_."

Katniss felt her jaw fall open, but somehow none of the muscles in her face would work to close it. All she could think of was Prim. Sweet, innocent Prim. Prim who cried over the body of a rabbit the one time Katniss had tried to take her hunting. Prim who went around town healing people. Prim… She couldn't even finish the thought. She couldn't even imagine… _that_ happening to Prim. If she did something would probably break in her mind.

"How long…?" Peeta managed to choke out.

"Ever since Snow bought her," Thresh said. "Since she was twelve."

Katniss felt like she was going to fall over. "Oh god," Peeta blurted out. "Oh god. Oh… Oh, I'm gonna be sick…" Peeta clamped one hand over his mouth and ran for a cluster of bushes nearby.

After a minute or two, Katniss regained her composure. Peeta's retching had quieted enough that they could no longer hear it from so far away. She squared her shoulders and faced the tree. "I'm going to go talk to her."

"You can't," Thresh said. "She won't let you."

Katniss didn't respond to Thresh, she walked up to the base of the tree and called up to Rue. "Hey, Rue? My name's Katniss. I'm gonna climb up there so we can talk. I won't come too close to you, just enough that we don't have to yell at each other. Okay?" She got no response, but then she hadn't been expecting one. She began climbing.

When she was half-way up the tree, she stopped for a moment. She could see Rue much better from here. Rue had positioned herself in some of the thinnest branches at the very top of the tree. Thresh was right, Katniss thought, even she couldn't have climbed out on those small branches. "Rue, I'm half way up now," she said. It was completely unnecessary, Rue could see her as easily as she could see Rue, but she wanted to maintain conversation with the girl, even if it was one-sided. "I'm going to climb up a little higher, but I'll stay down here near the trunk. Is that okay?" Getting no response, she continued climbing.

She continued climbing until she was within easy sight of the girl. She turned to look at her, but stayed near the trunk as she had said she would. "Rue? Rue, will you talk to me?" Rue still didn't respond, but from this distance she could hear the girl whimpering. She was so scared she was crying in fright. Katniss's heart went out to the girl, and she felt horrible that her presence was bringing more fear into the life of a girl who had suffered so much already.

Without an idea of how to handle the situation, she thought again of Prim. When Prim was scared, or when she had a nightmare, sometimes the only thing that would calm her was singing. Katniss would sing her the lullabies that their father used to sing to them. She hadn't sung to anyone other than Prim since he died, but she didn't know what else to try in this situation.

She was somewhat nervous. Nobody but her family had ever heard her sing. Well, other than Peeta, she supposed, but she quickly shut that thought down. This was no time to get lost thinking about whatever was going on between her and Peeta.

"Sometimes, when my sister is scared, I'll sing her a song. Is it okay if I sing for you, Rue?" She didn't get a response, but again, she wasn't expecting one. She took a deep breath and began to sing.

_Deep in the meadow, under the willow_  
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow  
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes  
And when again they open, the sun will rise.  
Here it's safe, here it's warm  
Here the daisies guard you from every harm  
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you. 

Rue seemed to be calming; Katniss couldn't hear her crying anymore. Rather than pushing things, she sang another verse.

_Deep in the meadow, hidden far away_  
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray  
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay  
And when again it's morning, they'll wash away.  
Here it's safe, here it's warm  
Here the daisies guard you from every harm  
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you. 

Katniss was quiet for a minute, hoping Rue would say something. Somewhat surprisingly, her patience was rewarded.

"I've never heard a boy with a voice that beautiful before," a small voice called out.

Katniss couldn't help but smile; Rue's voice was soft and sweet, just like Prim's. She decided that now was the time to lay all her cards out on the table. "Can you keep a secret, Rue? I'm not a boy."

"What?"

"My name is Katniss. But I'm pretending to be a boy named Kat so they'll let me be in the army."

She could see Rue cock her head in thought. "Why do you want to be in the army so bad?"

Katniss wasn't comfortable discussing her personal life, but she needed to trust this girl if she wanted her trust in return. "Cause I need the army pay to support my sister and my mother."

Rue seemed to think for another moment. "You must love your family a lot."

Katniss's voice caught in her throat as she answered. "I do."

They were quiet for a while after that, but it wasn't a tense, uncomfortable quiet like before. "My mother used to sing to me," Rue said at length.

"My father would sing to me when I was a girl," Katniss shared. "He died when I was eleven."

"I was sold away from Mama when I was twelve," Rue said.

They were quiet again until Rue asked, "Can you sing again?"

Taking any request from Rue as a sign of progress, Katniss didn't dare refuse to sing again.

_Black clouds are behind me_  
I now can see ahead  
Often I wonder why I try  
Hoping for an end  
Sorrow weighs my shoulders down  
And trouble haunts my mind  
But I know the present will not last  
And tomorrow will be kinder 

_Tomorrow will be kinder_  
It's true, I've seen it before  
A brighter day is coming my way  
Yes, tomorrow will be kinder 

Katniss snuck a look to check on Rue's mood. She had her eyes closed, with a small smile on her lips. Katniss continued with the next verse of the song.

_Today I've cried a many tear_  
And pain is in my heart  
Around me lies a somber scene  
I don't know where to start  
But I feel warmth on my skin  
The stars have all aligned  
The wind has blown, but now I know  
That tomorrow will be kinder 

_Tomorrow will be kinder_  
I know, I've seen it before  
A brighter day is coming my way  
Yes, tomorrow will be kinder  
A brighter day is coming my way  
Yes, tomorrow will be kinder 

After she finished singing, Katniss again waited for Rue to speak first. "You want me to climb down, don't you?"

"I do," Katniss answered, sticking to her decision to be as honest as possible with Rue. "They want to get everyone out in the open, so we can keep an eye on them and make sure nobody does anything… unexpected."

Rue's eyes widened. "You think one of the slaves would attack you?"

"Well, wouldn't you have? If Lieutenant Cato had cornered you somewhere?"

Rue's head drops in shame. "I guess."

"Rue, it's all right," Katniss said quickly, trying to reassure the girl. "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm just saying, we have over a hundred people here, and we know nothing about any of them. We need to be cautious."

Rue still didn't respond. "Will you come down with me?" Katniss asked. "We don't have to go anywhere, we'll just sit down under the shade of the tree. How about that?"

Rue lifted her head slightly. "Just you and me?"

"Thresh is waiting down there for us," Katniss told her. "And one other soldier, a boy from my town named Peeta." She saw Rue tense up at this news, and she rushed to reassure the girl. "It's okay! Peeta's a good guy, he's my…" _What the hell do I call Peeta?_ "He's a friend."

Rue still seemed tense, so Katniss tried to calm her. "Really, Peeta's nice. He, um, he knows about me. My secret. He's the only soldier that knows about me, everyone else we have to lie to."

Rue finally spoke. "Do you trust Peeta?"

The question caught Katniss off guard, and she surprised herself a bit with her answer. "Yes, I do."

"Okay," Rue said in an unsteady voice. "Then I'll try to trust him too."

Katniss was unexpectedly moved by the gesture. "Thank you, Rue." Rue didn't say anything else, and they were silent as the descended to the ground. Katniss found her thoughts turning to Peeta; in the last minute and a half he had gone from completely undefinable to a friend she trusted. Rue seemed to be quite the catalyst for defining her scattered thinking about Peeta. What would he be by the end of the day?

…..

Katniss had been up the tree for nearly twenty minutes. Peeta and Thresh were too far away to hear whatever was being said, though a couple of times Peeta thought he could hear Katniss singing. It was still the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

The afternoon sun was beating down on them. Peeta had already shed several layers of his army uniform, but he knew from last year that he should at least keep the shirt. His very fair, stereotypically townie complexion didn't stand up very well to prolonged sun exposure.

"You can go sit under the tree," Thresh suggested, breaking their long silence.

Peeta shook his head. "I think I should keep my distance, no need to be right there and spook the girl when she climbs down."

Thresh just nodded. He agreed, though he hadn't expected Peeta to understand the situation so well. He also thought Peeta's use of the word when was a bit optimistic.

Finally, they saw two figures emerge from the concealment of the leaves and drop to the ground, an olive-skinned soldier and a colored girl only a few inches shorter. Thresh ran over and engulfed the tiny girl in a huge bear hug. Peeta approached far more slowly, stopping completely fifteen feet away.

Katniss came over to him. "How'd it go?" he asked.

She shrugged at him. "She came down."

Peeta nodded. "Well, I can't imagine anybody who could refuse you anything once you sing for them."

Katniss raised an eyebrow. "You could hear me?"

"Not very well," he said. "But I'd recognize your singing anywhere."

Before Katniss could figure out how she wanted to respond to that, Rue spoke up. "So is that the other soldier?"

Peeta stepped away from Katniss so he could face Rue. She was standing in front of Thresh, but she was leaning back into him as if she wished she could disappear. Peeta put on his best smile. "Hi Rue. I'm Peeta."

Rue considered him for a long moment. "You look sick," she said bluntly.

Peeta's smile shifted towards a grimace. "Well, Thresh told us a little about your, um, situation. So I was just puking over in those bushes."

Rue nodded, as if in understanding. "Sometimes I puke too. After."

"I can't even imagine," Peeta said. "You must be so strong."

"I'm not strong," Rue snapped, her voice accusing. "I'm a weak little girl, that's why they can do that to me."

"There are different kinds of strength," Peeta said gently. "You're not strong like you could squish me like a bug like Thresh. But you have inner strength. You have the strength to survive. The only other person I know who's that strong is Katniss."

Nobody said anything for just a moment, and that was long enough for Katniss's hunter's senses to detect the approaching footsteps. She turned urgently to Peeta and told him, "Cato."

They'd been working together long enough that they understood each other, so he knew what she was saying even though he couldn't hear Cato's approach. "I'll hold him off, go get Marvel."

She nodded and sprinted off. Captain Marvel was the only one in the company who could overrule Cato, and Peeta knew how to handle Marvel just like he knew how to handle Cato earlier. If you wanted something out of Cato, you stroked his ego. If you wanted something out of Marvel, you provoked a pissing contest between him and Cato. And Cato tended to be only too happy to help with those efforts.

"Mellark," Cato called as he finally came within view. "I see you got the little bitch out of the tree. Good job. Let's move them to the barn with the others."

"Afraid not, Lieutenant. She gets real skittish around other people, we don't want to risk her running away again." Peeta had decided before opening his mouth that he would go into as little detail as possible about what it was that spooked Rue and why. "Kat and I will keep an eye on her away from the others."

Cato's expression darkened. "You're not disobeying our orders, are you, Mellark?"

Peeta held his arms out, as if in surrender, but his voice remained firm. "Look, just back off a bit, Cato. The girl has been through a lot, she doesn't want to be around anyone. She trusts Kat, so she's going to stay here with Kat."

Cato was having none of it. "She's going to do what we tell her to, and you are going to do what I tell you to, in case you've forgotten how rank works in this army, Private."

Luckily, before the situation could escalate any further, Katniss arrived with Captain Marvel in tow. "What's going on here? Everdeen said there was a problem."

Cato jumped in to speak before anyone else could. "Yeah, there's a problem. Mellark here has suddenly decided that he's too good to follow orders."

Marvel looked between Cato and Peeta for a moment. Peeta had been with the First for almost two years now, and Marvel knew what kind of soldier he was. Quiet, but reliable. Certainly not one to flaunt orders without reason. "What's the problem here, Mellark?"

"We've got a girl here, she's had a rough time. She doesn't like being around people, makes her panic. Took us half an hour just to get her to come down out of the tree. She trusts Thresh over there, and she trusts Kat, and she'll tolerate me. So the four of us are gonna set here a while and try to keep her calm, and keep her in sight."

Marvel considered this. "You can't stay out here forever, you'll have to come back to camp at night."

"We can set up at the edge of camp, where we can stay off to ourselves," Katniss suggested. "But we can't do that immediately. You've got to let us work at our own pace, if we push her too fast she'll run away again and we'll be right back where we started."

Marvel nodded his head. "Okay. As long as you're in camp by nightfall, I don't have an issue with it."

Katniss breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Captain."

"So what's the problem?" Marvel asked.

"Lieutenant Cato didn't like our plan," Peeta supplied.

Marvel turned a questioning look at Cato. "Sir, we're supposed to round up all the Negroes at the barn," Cato said.

Marvel looked amused. "Surely this little girl being here doesn't pose a threat, Lieutenant?"

" _He_ might," Cato glowered.

"Thresh won't be a problem," Peeta said. "He's just worried about the girl. As long as she's okay, he won't give us any trouble."

Marvel thought for a moment before nodding. "Mellark can keep an eye on him. Everdeen can keep her calm. I don't see a problem with it."

"But Sir, the count-" Cato began before Marvel cut him off.

Marvel pointed at Thresh and Rue in succession. "One, two. There's two slaves here with Everdeen and Mellark. Think you can keep that partial count in your head before counting the rest of them at the barn? Or do you need to write it down?"

Cato's face flushed with anger, but he kept his voice even. "No, Sir. I can remember it."

"Good," Marvel said. "Then why don't you go continue the count and leave these four alone?"

Marvel wasn't a bad sort overall, and Katniss and Peeta couldn't help but like him a bit more every time they saw him needling Cato like this. Cato grumbled out a quick "Yes, sir," before stalking away.

Marvel turned back to Peeta and Katniss. "You better keep those two under control. I don't want to have any reason for regretting this."

Peeta replied quickly, afraid of what Katniss might say. "There won't be any problem, Captain. Like I said, as long as we keep the girl away from other people, we'll be fine."

"Okay, good. Carry on," Marvel said, and turned to leave.

Katniss and Peeta exchanged a look. That had gone about as well as they could have hoped.


	3. Chapter 3

_May 12, 1863 (continued)_

They all spent several hours under the tree together, getting used to one another, getting a feel for one another. Rue was gradually able to relax in Peeta's presence, and she seemed to take a real liking to Katniss. Thresh remained wary and generally quiet, unsure about the two Yankee soldiers who had suddenly thrust themselves into his and Rue's lives, but certainly preferring them to the arrogant Lieutenant Cato or the indifferent Captain Marvel. Peeta spent the whole afternoon on eggshells, his primary goal being to not frighten Rue. This left Katniss with the task of carrying most of the conversation and trying to build a real rapport with the younger girl. She tried hard not to roll her eyes at the situation; somehow they found themselves in a circumstance where Peeta had to stay quiet and Katniss had to do the talking.

To Katniss and Peeta's surprise, what really earned them some trust was when they told Thresh and Rue stories of the hardships they had faced in their lives. Rue and Thresh seemed to have the impression that white folks up north lived in some kind of technological paradise, where nobody suffered and steam-powered machines did all the work. As they were disabused of this notion, their mistrust lessened. Rue's eyes were wide as Katniss described conditions for coal miners in Panem, as she described starving after her father died and her struggles to support her family since then.

Eventually they turned to Peeta, who tried to beg off. "I'm sorry, I don't have any dramatic tales of suffering like Katniss does."

"What do you do back home?" Rue asked him. After hearing Katniss's stories, her curiosity was overwhelming her nerves.

"My family owns the town bakery," Peeta explained. "We all worked there, my parents and my brothers and me. Don't get me wrong, it's hard work – we have to start work at four in the morning to have bread ready for the morning rush, and I've got plenty of burn scars from the ovens, and hundred-pound sacks of flour don't move themselves. But unlike a lot of the miners, we always have enough to eat. Most of it is three-days stale and the only reason we get to eat it is because it's unfit for customers, but there's always enough."

"Peeta," Katniss interjected, "tell them about your mother."

Peeta's calm, easygoing demeanor faltered. It was just a moment, but it was enough that all three of his companions saw it. Peeta coughed nervously, his eyes focused on a spot on the ground near his feet. "Katniss…"

"I know you don't like talking about it," Katniss said, hoping it would suffice as apology for bringing up such a touchy subject. "But I really think it'll help us all relate to each other."

Peeta didn't say anything in response. He picked up a stick and began poking at the spot on the ground which was so suddenly captivating. Thresh and Rue looked back and forth between them, unsure what to do. After a few tense moments, Katniss spoke up again. "Okay, I'll talk," she said, drawing Rue and Thresh's attention back to her. "I have another story to share."

She paused to collect her thoughts. She had never discussed this before, not even with Gale. But the connection she felt with Rue because she reminded her of Prim, and the connection she felt with Peeta for reasons she wasn't willing to think about too closely, made her want them to relate to each other. So she began telling her story. "It was during the worst time. My father had just died and my mother was off in her own world. The mine company paid us out a death benefit of less than a hundred dollars, and with my mother useless that was all we had to live on. We scrimped and we scraped and we made that money last us for the rest of the winter, but by the spring we were running out. I started selling our belongings to try to make some money, but we never had much to begin with."

Rue watched Katniss with rapt attention, her eyes wide. With all of the horror Snow had inflicted on her, he had at least fed her. She had never worried about starving. And even with everything she had been through in her life, she had always had people who helped her deal with it all. She had her Mama, and she had Thresh. She had never truly been on her own.

Thresh stared at Katniss and once again revised his assessment of the petite woman buried in her soldier's clothes. Peeta had compared her inner strength to Rue's earlier, and as she shared more of her experiences Thresh was starting to understand what he meant. The two women, who at first glance couldn't have been more different, were at their cores more similar than Thresh would have thought. Both always enduring, always surviving.

Peeta just kept digging into the ground with his stick, because he was almost certain he knew what story Katniss was about to tell.

"Once we ran out of money and ran out of things to sell, we just ran out. Panem isn't exactly well-off to begin with, there's no charity for a pair of starving miner's kids."

Katniss glanced to Peeta, and was surprised at the intensity of his gaze. Was he thinking of the same thing she was? Did he know where starving girls went in Panem? Who would offer them a handful of coins, and why? Did he know about Reverend Cray?

Katniss shook her head to clear her thoughts, and continued her story. "One day it was pouring rain, one of those ice-cold late-winter rainstorms that just leeches the heat right out of your bones. I had been out trying to sell some of my sister's old baby clothes, but nobody was interested. I was so hungry. I was so weak that when I dropped the clothes in the mud I didn't even try to pick them up, because if I bent over I wasn't sure if I could stand up again. Besides, nobody wanted those clothes, there was no way they could help feed us so they weren't worth carrying anymore anyway."

Katniss found herself mirroring Peeta's fascination with the ground. She didn't want to see how her companions were reacting to her story, didn't want to see the pity in their eyes. Still, she kept talking. "Eventually I resorted to digging through people's trash, looking for anything I could bring home to Prim. Just the thought of her sad eyes, her sunken cheeks…" She paused, taking a moment to compose herself. Even the memory of seeing Prim suffer was too much for her sometimes. "I couldn't go home and face her empty-handed again. I just couldn't. So I was digging through the trash behind the bakery when the baker's wife caught me."

"The baker's wife?" Rue repeated, turning to Peeta. "Is that your mother?"

"Yeah," Peeta said flatly.

"Did she help you?" Rue asked Katniss, looking hopeful.

"No. She yelled at me to get away, and she threatened to call the sheriff and have me arrested for stealing."

Rue looked back at Peeta in surprise. Peeta seemed like a good person, and Katniss had spoken so well of him. "Your mother did that?"

"My mother is not a nice person," Peeta said with a sigh, his eyes never leaving the ground.

"Your mother is an evil witch," Katniss said before she could stop herself.

Peeta just sighed again. "I'm not going to argue."

Rue turned back to Katniss, still trying to process this new information. "What did you do?"

"I stumbled away as best as I could, cause the last thing I wanted was to get the sheriff involved. If he knew how bad off my sister and I were, he would probably take us away from our mother and send us to an orphanage in the city. A place like that would've crushed Prim like a bug." Katniss's voice caught a bit on the idea of Prim in a city orphanage, and it was a moment before she could continue.

"So I did my best to leave, except I was so tired and so weak and so cold that I didn't make it far. I got past the pen where they kept their pig, but then I came to an apple tree at the edge of their property and I just couldn't do it any more. I just fell in a heap against the tree, and I couldn't get back up."

Katniss's eyes began tearing up at the memory of her weakness, and if anyone had been paying attention to Peeta they would have noticed that his stick had stilled its attacks on the ground and his eyes were brimming as well.

"I gave up," Katniss continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. "I was beaten. The circumstance had defeated me, and I was willing to accept defeat. I accepted that I was about to die, and that Prim would die, and that in all likelihood my mother would die; that I had failed myself and I had failed both of them and I had failed my father too. I failed to take care of my family. I sat there in the rain and I waited for death."

Rue sat enraptured, watching intently as a single tear escaped and made its way down Katniss's cheek, and she wiped it away so quickly that it might have been acid burning her skin. Rue surprised herself by how much Katniss's story was affecting her. She was normally slow to trust new people, her life had taught her to be wary. But somehow this woman soldier had made a connection to her in only a few hours, and now even with the grown Katniss sitting right next to her the idea of young Katniss being near death sent a painful churning through her gut. She had a million questions she wanted to ask, but she didn't dare interrupt Katniss's story.

"Just as I was about to close my eyes and let myself pass out, I heard a clatter in the bakery, and I heard Peeta's mother screaming again, and then I saw the back door open."

Katniss smiled slightly. "I looked up and I saw a blond-haired boy my age, stumbling through the muddy ground behind the bakery. He was carrying two loaves of bread that had been burned, and his mother was yelling at him, berating him for burning the bread. She told him to throw it to the pigs, because no one would want burned bread. Then she went back inside."

Rue and Thresh both glanced over to Peeta, making the obvious connection between the man before them and the boy from Katniss's story.

"I had seen the boy in the bakery before, I knew he was one of the baker's sons, although I didn't know his name at the time. And I had seen him with bruises before, I assumed they came from accidents during the baking work. All the baker's sons appeared bruised from time to time, but the youngest was the worst. I assumed it was because he was the youngest and so he was the clumsiest, or the weakest, or the least experienced, or the most of whatever quality was contributing to the baker's sons hurting themselves all the time. But the bright red weal on the boy's face that night wasn't any normal bruise, it was a fresh wound, and I immediately connected it to the commotion I had heard form the bakery earlier. This boy had burnt some bread, and in response his mother had hit him in the face with – what? A spoon? An oven pan? Her fist?"

"A rolling pin," Peeta said quietly, his eyes never leaving the ground. "That night it was a rolling pin."

Katniss nodded slightly, adding this detail to the memory she replayed in her head so often. "This boy had burned some bread, and in response his mother had hit him in the face with a rolling pin. And berated him as worthless, and useless. And even though I was about to die, I felt bad about how I had misjudged the boy. He had both his parents and he never worried about starving, but he had far from the charmed life I had imagined. But nothing could have prepared me for what he did next."

Rue glanced over at Peeta, dread pooling in her stomach. What role did he play in this story? Did he yell at Katniss as his mother had? Did he chase her off like she was some cretin? The experiences of Rue's young life had taught her to expect the worst from people; she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Thresh looked over to Peeta. He could tell that Rue was nervous about what Katniss was about to tell them about him, but Thresh felt confident that this story had a happy ending. Otherwise the two of them wouldn't be as close as they were now. Instead, Thresh appraised Peeta's physical capabilities. The young soldier wasn't as big or as strong as Thresh himself, but he was no slouch. He could certainly defend himself against his mother, and probably could have since he was ten. Of course, Thresh could have physically defended himself against Snow too, but that wouldn't have done anyone any good.

Katniss continued. "As soon as his mother was gone, the boy abandoned all pretense of walking toward the pig and instead came straight over to where I was hunched against the tree. He picked me up and got me standing again – I don't think I could have done it on my own – and then he shoved the two loaves of bread into my hands. I just stood there, too dumbfounded to react at all. We were both silent for a moment, and then the boy said something that I didn't understand until many years later. He said, 'Don't think of it as charity, just take them and go before my mother comes back out here.' Then he turned me around and shoved me on my way so hard that I almost fell again, but I managed to stumble away, and somehow made it all the way home before I collapsed from exhaustion."

Rue let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Peeta saved Katniss's life! He saved her from starving, saved her from giving up, and saved her from his mother. She looked back to Peeta, who still had his head down, as if the entire thing embarrassed him.

"When I finally let myself fall into one of the kitchen chairs, and dropped my load of wet, burnt bread onto the table, my sister's face lit up like I hadn't seen since our father died. I had to constantly slow her to keep her from just inhaling the bread and making herself sick, and even so we ate an entire loaf for dinner that night. Once we pulled the blackened bits off the outside, the whole inside of the loaves was fine really. It wasn't even wet from the rain, the burnt shell had protected it from most of the water. It was delicious, fresh from the oven bakery bread, good hearty bread filled with raisins and nuts. The perfect bread to make a meal out of."

Katniss allowed herself a smile, remembering that night. How Prim seemed to come alive with each bite. How even her mother had come to the table to share the meal with them. "My family was going to survive another day. Heck, we could survive a week on that much bread. It was a miracle."

Rue had a question in her mind, and in the next moment Katniss voiced it herself. "It didn't even occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. That he might have dropped those loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being beaten, just so he could have an excuse to give them to me. I wanted to dismiss the idea, but the fact that he came straight to me and practically shoved them into my hands certainly suggested he wasn't acting on a spur of the moment whim. But I didn't understand why he would do such a thing, knowing that he would be in for an even worse beating if he was discovered."

Rue wanted to ask Peeta right now why he had done it, but again she held her tongue for fear of interrupting Katniss's story. "It was while I was thinking about everything that next morning that I realized that this boy had done me this enormous kindness, had saved the lives of my entire family, and I hadn't even thanked him. There was no way I could ever repay all he had done for me with that one gesture, but I was determined to at least thank him. So that day I went straight back to the bakery, determined to walk in there and thank the boy. But when I got there, I looked through the front window and saw his mother behind the counter, and I froze. I hid around the corner behind the shoemaker's, because the last thing I wanted was for her to see me there again."

"It's a good thing you didn't come in that day," Peeta said, surprising everyone with his interruption. "Mr. Rooba the butcher was there that morning complaining about someone overturning his trash bins the day before."

"That wasn't me," Katniss said. "The butcher's trash was already picked clean by the time I got there."

Peeta just shrugged. "Well, he told Mom about his trash, and she told him about you, and the two of them spent about fifteen minutes complaining about 'degenerate coalminer vermin.' So that morning would have been a bad time for you to show up at the bakery."

Katniss didn't have any response for that, so she continued her story. "I waited there for a while, trying to figure out what to do, and eventually I saw the boy in the bakery, filling a shelf with some fresh loaves of bread. The red weal on his cheek had swollen and looked painful, and his eye had blackened as well. As he was finishing up whatever he was doing, he happened to look out the front window, and he saw me watching him. We stood frozen like that, staring at each other through the window, for I don't know how long. Finally I looked away, I glanced down at the ground where I was standing, and I saw a dandelion. The first dandelion of the year. And as soon as I saw it, it was like a bell went off in my head. I thought of all the hours I spent in the woods with my father, all the years he spent teaching me how to hunt, teaching me what plants were edible and which ones weren't. Suddenly I knew how we were going to survive. I knew how I was going to support my family. I bent over and picked the dandelion, and when I looked up the boy was still watching me. We exchanged another look before he went back to his work and I went back home."

"I always wondered if it was something like that," Peeta interrupted again, finally lifting his eyes to look at Katniss. "I remember the look on your face, you looked down at that flower and it was like the entire world was opening up before your eyes. And it was only a few weeks after that that you started showing up at our back door with fresh game."

"It was like seeing a whole new world," Katniss said, returning his gaze. "The day before I was ready to die, and suddenly I had not only a reprieve, but a way forward. And to this day it's still all connected in my head: The bread that saved my life, the dandelion that gave me hope, and the boy who was responsible for all of it."

Everyone was quiet for a moment, as Katniss and Peeta continued staring at one another. Finally Rue asked, "So did you ever get to thank him properly?"

"Not for many years," Katniss said. "I would see him from time to time, but we never acknowledged that night. Not once. We never discussed it until I snuck into the army and we wound up in the same company, and he saved me again by not turning me in."

Nobody quite knew what to say after that. After a few minutes of silence, Rue surprised everyone by getting up and walking over to Peeta. She sat directly in front of him, and looked him straight in the eye. Nobody said anything, waiting to see what the girl was doing. She almost seemed to be studying the young man, who did his best to return her gaze without seeming challenging or intimidating. After another few minutes, Rue finally spoke. "You shouldn't be embarrassed because your mother hit you," she told him. "You're a good person."

"Thanks, Rue," Peeta said, unsure of how to respond.

Rue's gaze shifted away as she spoke again. "I used to feel ashamed because of what those men did to me. Sometimes I still do."

"But none of that was your fault," Peeta said emphatically. "You can't get down on yourself because of what other people do."

Rue smiled slightly as she looked him in the eye once more. "You're right. You can't."

Peeta shook his head at the younger girl. "You're way too clever for me, Rue."

Rue sat silently for another minute. She cocked her head slightly, as if she were trying to see Peeta from another angle. After a while, she seemed to nod to herself, then she got up and returned to her previous spot by Katniss and Thresh, both of whom continued to hold their tongues and wait for some explanation from Rue. She offered none, however, instead telling the group a story about Chaff, an older slave whose hand was amputated as punishment after an escape attempt, who wound up working in Snow's rose gardens since he couldn't do field work with one hand. Katniss and Peeta had to admit, the rose garden on the property was very impressive.

By the time sunset was approaching, Rue agreed to move to the army encampment. The four set themselves up at the edge of camp, and Finnick and Caesar made sure the rest of the company knew to leave them alone tonight. As the last of the day's light disappeared behind the horizon, Katniss, Peeta, Thresh, and Rue were huddled around their fire, enjoying some of the food the First had found stored on the property. Rue even sat through a brief examination by Doc Aurelius. They told a few more stories around the fire before they all bedded down for the night.

It was several hours later when the sound of someone approaching caused Peeta to stir in his sleep. He looked up just in time to see Rue seat herself right beside him.

"Rue?" he asked groggily as he sat up to face her.

The girl was quiet for a long time before answering. "What's it like to be in love?" she finally asked.

"Wha...?" Peeta was pretty sure that question would have stumped him even if he wasn't still half asleep.

"You love Katniss," she said. "That's why you gave her that bread." It wasn't a question, and Peeta didn't bother trying to deny it.

"I said you were too clever for me. Am I that obvious?"

"I don't know. It seemed kind of obvious to me."

Peeta laughed lightly. "I've been helping her hide the fact that she's a woman from the army for almost a year, but I couldn't hide the fact that I love her from you for an afternoon. Thank god Marvel and Cato aren't as smart as you."

"So what's it like?" Rue repeated.

Peeta thought for a moment. "You mean how did I know?"

"No, I mean, what does it feel like?" she said. "I've never been in love. I just want to know what it's like," she explained, her voice growing smaller and less confident as she continued.

Peeta wanted to tell her that she was too young to be in love, but he knew that assertion would fall on deaf ears. Rue had been forced to grow up too young just to survive. Just like Katniss. Just like him.

He stopped and thought before trying to answer her. "Being in love... it's like I've found something I didn't know I'd been missing all my life. Like my head is filled with questions I never thought to ask before, and the answer to every one of them is her. I feel like my life has a purpose, that I have a reason for living, and that reason is her. She's the reason behind almost everything I do, to the point where I don't even remember why I did things before her. I live for her, and if I had to I'd die for her, with no regrets."

Rue stared at something in the distance, taking time to digest his words. "I wish someone felt that way about me."

"I'm sure someone will, one day," Peeta said. "You're still young, Rue. You have time to find someone."

"None of the men I was with thought I was too young," Rue said bitterly.

"And why should we trust their opinion on anything?" Peeta asked. "No matter what has happened to you, you're still only 14. You have plenty of years ahead of you to find love."

"What if I never find it?" Rue asked. "What if no man will have me because I've been spoiled?"

"If he really loves you, that won't matter to him."

"How could it not matter?" Rue asked, a tinge of sadness entering her voice. "Isn't that important to men? Aren't wives supposed to be pure on their wedding night?"

"Rue, there's a big difference between what's 'supposed to be' and what actually is. In a perfect world, if everyone lived ideal lives, then yes, everyone would be pure on their wedding night and everyone would only ever be with their spouse. But we don't live in a perfect world. We don't live ideal lives. Far from it. We live in a world filled with imperfections. That's part of what love is. Loving someone despite everything that's wrong with them. Loving someone because of everything that's wrong with them."

Rue's brow knit in confusion. "How can you love someone because of what's wrong with them?"

Peeta opened his mouth to reply, but had to pause for a moment, struggling to put his thoughts into words. Finally, he said, "I love Katniss's scowl." Rue gave him a skeptical look. "I do! I love the way her eyes seem to get closer together whenever she scowls. I love the intense look she gives you when she's really starting to get angry, with her gray eyes it's like two storm clouds are boring into your soul. I love the way her lips curve down at the end, just ever so slightly, but only on one side of her mouth. Every time I see it I want to kiss her on that spot." He paused to think for a moment. "I love that she's so guarded around most people, because it shows how much she trusts the few people she's more open with. I love that she's so short-tempered, because it shows how much she cares."

Rue examined the young soldier for a moment. "Wow, you really are a goner."

Peeta sighed lightly. "Yeah."

"And if Katniss had been sold to other men like I was, that wouldn't change things? You wouldn't care?"

Peeta jerked his head at her last question. "Of course I'd care," he said angrily, just the thought of Katniss suffering like that filling him with rage. Rue misinterpreted his words and his anger, and had a moment of despondency before Peeta continued speaking. "I'd want to find every one of those men and cut their balls off. I'd want to beat them to death with my bare hands." Peeta closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "But it wouldn't change how I feel about Katniss."

"You're a good man, Peeta," Rue told him. "I wish there were more men out there like you."

"There are," he assured her. "Rue, you've experienced some of the worst that humanity has to offer. There's no denying that. But that doesn't mean that the best isn't still out there, just waiting for you. Just look at today. Katniss chased you up a tree and sang to you. She told you and Thresh the truth about her, gave you the power to ruin her life and trusted you not to. That's how much she cared about you before you'd even properly met. Thresh was faced with an army full of white men with guns telling him to go to the barn and eat, but instead he ignored the chance for a feast and defied the army to stay and watch out for you. Good people do good things, every single day. And I know you'll experience that now. You have a chance for a whole new life now. A long, happy life, filled with nothing but good things."

"You're just trying to make me feel better," Rue said accusingly.

"Is it working?"

Rue smiled for the first time that night. "Maybe a little."

Peeta smiled back at her. "Good. You deserve to feel better. You deserve a long, happy life, filled with joy and love. And trust me, one day you'll meet a man who will bring that love into your life. You'll know you love him when you're not afraid to tell him your story, and you'll know he loves you when hearing it only makes him hug you tighter. And maybe start compiling a list of men he wants to hunt down and cut the balls off of," he added with a grin, actually managing to draw a laugh from the girl.

"Well," she said, "I did promise a friend that I would try to trust you."

"Well, trust me on this," Peeta said, "you're going to feel awful tomorrow if you don't get some sleep tonight."

Rue smiled and agreed, and got up to return to sleep. Peeta laid back down as well, and soon both were dozing easily, their rest calm and peaceful. The only one left awake was Katniss, her mind spinning as she tried to absorb everything she had just heard Peeta say about her.


	4. Chapter 4

_May 13, 1863_

Katniss spent most of the night awake, and for once it wasn't because of nightmares. Peeta's words kept repeating themselves in her head. She couldn't make them stop.

She had known, in an abstract way, that Peeta loved her. He had told her, once, in passing, last year. And certainly his actions had hinted at the fact. But she had never actually heard him express his love, never heard him talk about _how_ he loved her, _why_ he loved her. How he wanted to kiss her. How he would die for her. He would _die_ for her.

He never spoke of it because he knew it would disturb her, and he was right, because now that she had heard it she was definitely disturbed.

Katniss had no experience with love. Of course she loved Prim, and in a way she loved her mother, and even Gale and the Hawthornes. But this kind of love, romantic love, she had never felt. She had never let herself love anyone. She had had one example of love in her life: her parents. Her parents had loved each other deeply. They had shared the kind of love that you read about in storybooks and fairy tales. And it had almost killed her, because when her father died, her mother fell apart. Maybe if her parents had not loved each other quite so fiercely, then her mother would have been able to deal with her father's death. Maybe her mother would have been able to support the family. Maybe the responsibility for the family's survival wouldn't have rested on the shoulders of an eleven-year-old girl.

Love had almost killed her. And yet, love had saved her as well. She harbored no illusions as to why Peeta had given her that bread that day, about what exactly had motivated him to take a beating from his mother just for the opportunity to help her. Peeta's love for her had saved her from the disastrous consequences of her mother's love for her father.

It was all too much for her. It was too much to figure out, too many conflicting emotions to sort through. Everything about her current situation conflicted with itself, and it left her head spinning. _My name is Katniss Everdeen. My name is Kat Everdeen. I'm a hunter. I'm a soldier. I love my father. My father is dead. Love almost killed me. Love saved me. I only ever sing for Prim. I sang for Rue. I owe Peeta my life. Peeta insists I don't owe him anything. Peeta keeps me sane. Peeta is driving me crazy._

_Peeta loves me. And I... I..._

That was the problem, right there. If she could finish that last sentence, then everything else would fall into place. The problem was, she couldn't. She _couldn't_.

What was wrong with her, anyway? She was in a war. She was here to support Prim, the only person in the world she was certain she loved. She regularly spent her days furiously trying to kill people before they killed her. She didn't have time to worry about _romance_. Love had never been a consideration for her before, and it shouldn't be now. Love was a distraction she couldn't afford.

She had almost convinced herself of this as she sat in a grassy field outside of camp, watching the impending sunrise erase the sky full of stars. She was so immersed in the quiet and the solitude and the beauty of the heavens that she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard footsteps approaching her.

She wasn't surprised at all when it was Peeta who plopped down next to her. "Couldn't sleep either?" he asked her.

"Couldn't turn my mind off," she said.

They didn't speak as they watched the sunrise together, both knowing that they would have to start their day soon enough but neither of them ready to do so quite yet. Unsurprisingly it was Peeta who broke the silence. "That's my favorite color," he said. Katniss replied with nothing but a questioning look. "The orange in sunrises and sunsets," he explained with a nod towards the horizon. "It's beautiful."

Katniss considered the sky before her. As many sunrises and sunsets as she had seen in the woods around Panem, she had never thought to analyze the colors they painted in the sky. Now that she really looked, she had to agree with him. It was beautiful.

"Mine's green," she said. "Like the forest."

Peeta nodded again. "Yeah, I can see that."

The quiet reigned once more following their short exchange. Finally, Peeta spoke.

"You were awake when I was talking to Rue last night, weren't you?"

Katniss didn't turn to look at him. "Yeah," she said.

"I'm sorry if I upset you."

Katniss almost laughed. It was so like Peeta to apologize for things he said in what was supposed to be a private conversation, things she only overheard by eavesdropping. "You didn't do anything wrong. You were just telling the truth, right?"

"Just cause it's the truth doesn't mean it can't be upsetting," he said.

"I'm fine," she insisted, as much to herself as to him.

Peeta made a noncommittal grunt in reply, finally prompting Katniss to look over to him. "You don't have to pretend with me, Katniss," he told her. His use of her real name acted as a signal of sorts, letting her know that he wasn't talking about the war, or their current roles as soldiers. That they were taking a time-out from all of that, that this was just Peeta the baker's son talking to Katniss the huntress. "Even if you're trying to lie to yourself, you never have to do that with me."

Katniss had no idea how to respond to that, so she didn't. Instead she told him honestly, "I just can't deal with this right now."

"I'm not asking you to," he answered quickly, but then seemed to stop himself and rethink his words. "I'm trying so hard, every day, to not make this weird for you. To not overwhelm you with my issues. To be a help to you without burdening you with my desires."

"You are a help to me," she insisted. "I never would have made it past Antietam if it wasn't for you. I'd never make it through the night if not for you."

She could see the ghost of a smile her words brought to his face. "I'm glad. I just hope you don't feel like I'm… demanding anything of you, or placing any burden on you, because of how I feel. We don't have to be anything more than friends right now."

Friends. She could handle friends, right? Isn't that the name for what they were becoming? Isn't that what she had told Rue they were?

She thought for a moment of Rue. She had thought yesterday in the tree that Rue might force her to confront her scattered thinking about her relationship with Peeta, and that had certainly become the case. There was no way she felt ready to confront the totality of his feelings, but this much she felt okay with.

"I think I could handle friends."

Peeta allowed himself a small smile. "So you'll let me be your friend?"

Katniss smiled back at him. "I'll allow it."

Peeta smiled wider. "Well, as your friend, I have to say this." He leaned forward slightly, as if he were about to share a secret. "I don't like the way that Mellark guy looks at you. I'd watch out for him. You know what guys like that are like."

Katniss couldn't stifle her laughter at Peeta's mock warning. Soon Peeta joined with a chuckle of his own. All the tension of the morning seemed to be melting away.

The sun was fully risen now. Peeta stood and held a hand out. "Come on, Kat. Everyone will be up soon."

Kat. Time-out over. Back to the act they had to maintain in front of everyone else. But when she took his offered hand and stood, as they made their way back to camp, they didn't let go of each other's hands. For the briefest of moments, with the camp hidden behind a rise in the landscape and the new day dawning behind them, they were just two people, all alone, holding hands.

…..

"Do you have any plans?" Peeta asked as they were packing up their camp after breakfast. "Anywhere to go?"

Rue looked to Thresh to answer him. Though none of them had spoken of it, it was assumed by all four of them that wherever Thresh went, Rue would follow. "Nope," the large man answered. "Never known anything but slavery. But we sure as hell don't want to stay around here." With no better options, that's what most of the slaves planned to do, keep working the plantation but without masters and overseers. Thresh had no interest in that, but he really didn't have any idea where else they could go.

Katniss spoke up without thinking. "If you want, you could go to Panem. I know some people who can help you."

For a moment they all looked at each other. They were all shocked that she would suggest such a thing, including Katniss herself. Who was she to determine the next step in two people's lives? Two people she had known for less than a day, two people tasting freedom for the first time, certainly didn't need her deciding where they should live.

But then she looked at Rue. Once she got over her initial surprise, Rue was genuinely excited about the idea. There were relatively few people she truly trusted. She had Thresh. Her mama was probably still on their old plantation, but no way was she going into the Confederacy looking for her. But in Panem, at the least there would be Katniss's family. She could meet Prim. And she could know Katniss after the war. With literally no better ideas, she found herself eager to accept Katniss's impromptu offer.

Thresh tried to beg off. "You said you joined the army to support your family. We can't take from them if you're going so far just for them to get by."

Katniss shook her head. "I wasn't talking about my family. They'll help you any way they can, of course, but you're right, they can't afford to be enough help on their own. You want to go see the Undersees."

Hannah and Mayor Undersee were the heads of a prominent Quaker family in Panem. Katniss was friendly with their daughter, Madge, whom she had met at Miss Trinket's school. Everyone in town knew the Undersees because Mayor Undersee, even though he was just a man named Mayor and not an actual elected official, was often treated like one anyway. He represented Panem at the county seat, and was often asked to settle disputes between citizens. What most people didn't know was that for years the Undersees had operated a station on the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves escape to freedom. Katniss knew, because when the Undersees needed meat to feed their guests but didn't want to have to explain to the butcher why they needed so much extra food, they went to Katniss to hunt them some game. With the war on, fugitive slaves were no longer hunted in Pennsylvania, but Katniss was confident that the Undersees would still be willing to help people in need.

After some further discussion, the combination of Rue's interest and the lack of other options lead Thresh to accept Katniss's idea. They obtained a Pennsylvania map from Captain Marvel, and Katniss wrote them letters of introduction to Prim and Madge while Peeta and Rue worked on packing them a knapsack full of food for their journey.

Soon it was time to leave. Thresh shook the hands of both Katniss and Peeta. Rue gave Katniss a hug, then surprised everyone by doing the same to Peeta, who very gingerly returned the embrace. "Take care, Rue," he told the young girl, "and remember what we talked about."

Rue nodded back at him. "I will."

Soon enough it was mid-day and time to depart, the army company further south into Virginia, Thresh and Rue north into Pennsylvania, each headed where they had never ventured before.

…..

_July 7, 1863_

"Mellark?"

Peeta was laying on the floor of the library of someone's home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His head was resting on two books as he read a third.

The tiny town of Gettysburg was still struggling to handle the onslaught of wounded men produced by the battle the week before. Thus why there were a dozen of them calling the floor of this library home. Peeta himself had taken a very nasty bayonet wound to the upper thigh during fierce fighting in the third day of the battle. It was a deep wound, and very prone to infection, but Doc Aurelius had said he could prevent infection by washing carefully. He washed the wound, his hands, the needle, and even the thread with a harsh lye soap before he stitched and bandaged the wound, and Peeta had made a point of washing the wound at least every day since then. Katniss had tried to help, but the position of the wound – high up on the inside of his thigh – made her blush red from embarrassment.

Katniss. They had an odd relationship, to say the least. He loved her, and what's more she now knew he loved her, even if she had doubted him at first she couldn't any longer. In the months since their conversation at the Snow Estate they had grown closer, more at ease with each other. She had actually begun to open up to him. He would count her as his closest friend, without a doubt. And every so often she would give him a look, or a smile, or a touch, that suggested that they could possibly be more one day. Peeta refused to push things, he knew that would end in disaster, but he had hope for the future. And in this war, hope for the future was a very powerful thing.

They had to be careful, though. As far as the rest of the company was concerned, Kat Everdeen was a young boy, and he was getting younger every day to explain why he hadn't hit puberty yet. When Kat had arrived last year he had been said to be 14. Now that it was a year later and his voice still hadn't changed, he was still 14, having arrived last year at the tender age of 13. The ruse wouldn't last if the war went on much longer.

They had to remember to be very careful how they treated each other in public. They had become more and more comfortable with each other in the privacy of their tent, especially at night when the nightmares hit. But in public they weren't a 19-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman, they were a 19-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy. They knew there were rumors about them, they knew that more than a few soldiers thought they were sodomites. Peeta did his best to play their public relationship as him treating Kat affectionately like a kid brother, and folks like Colonel Abernathy, Captain Odair, Sergeant Caesar, and Doc Aurelius always had their backs. Doc knew about Katniss, of course, and Peeta thought that Haymitch and Finnick at least suspected something, but they trusted each other and nobody ever said anything.

Katniss lay next to him on the floor. She had a gash on her forehead from a bayonet that both she and Doc Aurelius tried to reassure him was not as bad as it looked, and also a nasty burn wound on her leg from an exploding mortar. The leg wound especially made them thankful that they had Doc Aurelius to treat her in confidence; another doctor examining her that closely could easily have discovered her true gender.

Peeta spared a quick glance at Katniss before responding to the speaker; luckily she was turned on her side away from his view. The combination of her uniform, the thin blanket covering her body, her naturally small frame, and living off army rations for nearly a year successfully hid any body curves that might have given her away. Peeta hoped she was awake and wouldn't accidentally turn over in her sleep as he turned to respond to his unexpected visitor.

"Hello, Gale. Fancy meeting you here."

"What are you doing here, Mellark?"

"Same thing as you," Peeta said, nodding towards the arm Gale had in a sling. "I'm injured. Took a bayonet to the thigh. You?"

"Something in my elbow," Gale said. "Doc just said don't move it for a few weeks. Not sure how he expects me to do that in this army."

Peeta chuckled at him. "Yeah, Doc basically told me don't get off this floor till next week. It hasn't been much fun so far."

There was an awkward moment before Gale spoke again. "Didn't exactly expect to find a merchant in the infantry."

Peeta knew what he meant, but he still wasn't sure how to respond. "Well, surprise."

"How come you're not in the 47th?"

"I was avoiding you."

This answer surprised Gale. "Me, specifically?"

"This conversation," Peeta explained. "This whole merchant-versus-miner thing. It's bad enough at home, I didn't want to have to deal with it when there were bullets flying. I was trying to avoid serving with a bunch of miners who would give me crap about being a merchant in the infantry."

"And how's that working out for you?"

"Pretty good so far. You know, other than the bayonet in the thigh."

Peeta was pleased that his answer actually got a small laugh from Gale. His next question raised his guards, though. "You ever hear from anyone from home?"

"Not since I enlisted, no," Peeta said.

Gale raised his eyebrows at this. "Not even your parents?"

"You know my mother," Peeta said by way of explanation. Even if her abuse of her sons wasn't common knowledge, everyone in Panem knew of the nasty personality of the baker's wife.

Gale was silent for another moment before he continued. "I was just asking because, well, I have this… friend of mine back home. Katniss Everdeen?"

Peeta was careful to keep his face impassive. He only nodded in acknowledgement. "I know her a bit. She trades at the bakery."

Gale eyed him skeptically. "You know her?"

"Well, enough to say 'Hi,' or 'How many squirrels today?'"

Gale seemed to accept this. "I've been writing this whole year, and I haven't heard anything back from her once."

Peeta tried to act as calm as possible. "Maybe she's not much of a letter writer?"

Gale shook his head. "Something's going on, I'm sure of it. I've written my family, and hers, and all they'll tell me is that she's fine, they won't give me any detail. But I had a few of the other guys in the 47th ask their families, and they all say the same thing: None of them have seen Katniss in almost a year. I'd think she was dead, if it wasn't for the reassurances from her family. I know they wouldn't lie to me about that, but something must be up if they won't tell me what's going on with her. I was just hoping maybe you had heard something."

Peeta just shook his head. "Sorry, I haven't heard anything from anyone in Panem since I signed up in '61. Even if I wrote home, they won't know anything more than everyone else in town."

Gale just nodded sadly. "Yeah, that's what I figured. Had to take a shot, though. It's driving me crazy not knowing what happened to her."

Peeta tried to offer him some reassurance. "If Mrs. Everdeen and Prim say she's fine, I'd believe them. Prim doesn't strike me as the type who could lie about anything. And I'm sure your family wouldn't keep you in the dark if something had really happened."

"Yeah, that's what I keep telling myself. Anyway, I should be going. Take care of yourself, Mellark."

"You too, Gale. See you at the next one."

Gale chuckled a little as he walked away. Luckily he didn't look back, or else he would have gotten a clear view of Katniss's distraught face watching him leave. She wanted desperately to talk to him after so long apart, wanted desperately to reassure him, tell him she was indeed fine, tell him not to worry about her. But it was impossible. Instead she stayed as still and as silent as she could as she watched her best friend walk away.

But that just brought up her confused thoughts. She and Peeta had grown closer over the past months, despite every intention of hers. Was Gale even her best friend anymore? She couldn't imagine allowing Gale to hold her and comfort her as she wept after a nightmare. She couldn't imagine sleeping pressed up against Gale in an effort to fight off the terrors together. But then, those weren't exactly things you did with a friend, anyway. But she didn't even want to acknowledge the possibility that she and Peeta could be anything more than friends, certainly not that she might want to be more than friends.

She rolled over to face Peeta, only to find him already staring at her intently. "Thank you for trying to reassure him."

"I didn't want to say anything more, I was afraid of tipping him off."

"No, you couldn't have said anything more. You handled it perfectly. I just wish there was some way I could set his mind at ease. Maybe I could send Prim a letter to forward to him?"

"He'd probably recognize it came from an army post."

She let out a dejected sigh. "Yeah…"

Peeta resisted the urge to reach over and touch her face; there were too many other people in this room. "He'll see you the same time everybody gets to see their family: when the war ends." Katniss didn't say anything in response, just nodded. She lay back down and stared at the ceiling, alone with her thoughts.

On the floor between them, hidden by their overlapped blankets, their hands found each other. Fingers intertwined, palms clasped together, reassuring each other that no matter how bleak it seemed, they weren't alone. Friends did that, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm procrastinating from working on the next chapter, so I decided to crosspost the story so far here to AO3. I'm finally getting back to the materiel I already had written back when this was still going to be a one-shot, so hopefully I'll be able to get new chapters out a bit more quickly for now.
> 
> Next chapter: Revelations and unexpected reunions at Petersburg!


	5. Chapter 5

_November 22, 1864_

They were huddled around the campfire, fighting off the cold together: General Abernathy. Colonel Odair. Captain Caesar. Lieutenants Mellark and Everdeen. All the officers. All the survivors. All the ones who had been there forever. All the old men of the regiment, even though Lieutenant Everdeen was only 14 years old, having fooled the recruiters in '62 at the tender age of 12.

So many were gone. So many dead and mauled in the Overland Campaign last spring. Dalton. Woof. Marvel. Aurelius. But it had seemed to be serving an objective: By June they were within spitting distance of the Confederate capitol of Richmond. All that was needed was to break Bobby Lee's lines at Petersburg and the war would practically be over. They could almost taste it. They could all go home.

But here they were, more than five months later, and no closer to Petersburg. No closer to Richmond. No closer to home.

So here they sat, around the fire, these men who had faced death together, these men who had become closer than family. They didn't say anything to each other, they didn't need to. They sat in companionable silence until a passing soldier from another regiment intruded.

"Excuse me, General Abernathy, sir?"

Haymitch appraised the intruder. "Yes, Sergeant, what is it?"

"I have a message from Colonel Boggs, sir."

As Abernathy read the paper he had been handed, the intruding sergeant scanned the assembled group, until he found a familiar set of gray eyes looking back at him in shock. "Catnip? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?"

Seemingly oblivious to the house of cards about to collapse around her, Finnick turned to Katniss with one of his obnoxious Finnick grins. "What did he just call you? Catnip?"

Katniss didn't respond. Peeta broke the shocked silence. "Um, guys, this is Gale Hawthorne. He's from Panem, just like Kat and me."

After another uncomfortable silence, Haymitch spoke up. "You may as well sit down and join us, Hawthorne. And try to keep your voice down, we don't need to be advertising her private business to the entire regiment."

Gale gawked at Haymitch for a moment, then sat down roughly. He scowled when he saw how closely Peeta and Katniss were sitting.

Seeing that Katniss was still frozen in terror, Peeta broke the silence again. "Well, I think Caesar is the only one here who still doesn't know the secret."

Caesar smiled widely at him. "What, that sweet little Kat here hasn't really been a 14-year-old boy for the last two years? Give me some credit, Mellark. I may be old but I'm not stupid."

Peeta smiled and shook his head. "Okay, so everybody knows the big secret now. I guess that means we can talk openly."

Gale was angry and terse. "So what are you doing here, Katniss?"

Now that she was reassured that she wasn't about to be court-martialed and sent home, Katniss was returning to normal. Gale's anger only fueled her own, however. "What does it look like, Gale? I'm in the army."

"Well yes, I can see that, but women aren't allowed in the army!"

Katniss just shrugged at him. "That's why, as far as the army's concerned, I'm a boy named Kat."

"Seriously?" Gale asked with disdain. Katniss chose not to respond. Gale looked like he didn't know whether to shout or cry. "Why did you do this?" he asked.

"It was the only way to support Mom and Prim," Katniss explained. "All the trade in town dried up, and I needed a way to make some money. And the army was the only one hiring."

Gale's expression shifted from anger to pain. "Why didn't you tell me what was happening? Do you know how worried I was when people told me you'd disappeared? I had half of Panem looking for you!" He shifted his gaze to Peeta, and his anger was back. "You knew about this, and you lied to my face!"

"I couldn't tell you," Peeta said calmly. "We couldn't tell anybody, we _can't_ tell anybody. Nobody but our closest comrades has any idea."

"I was there that day, Gale," Katniss spoke up. Gale gave her a questioning look. "When you spoke to Peeta in Gettysburg. I was there, I was right next to him pretending to be asleep. I watched you walk away." Katniss voice caught in her throat for a moment. "I wanted to be able to tell you something, but I knew you'd try to get me sent home."

"I am gonna send you home," Gale confirmed.

"Don't you dare," warned General Abernathy. "Us First Volunteers, we're a close-knit group. Don't cross us. I can make your life miserable in this army."

"If you actually cared about her you'd send her home," Gale said accusingly.

"I care about all of my soldiers," Abernathy countered. "I want to send them all home. And I will, just as soon as we break Bobby Lee and string up old Jeff Davis. Till then, we need every soldier we've got, and Everdeen here is one of my better ones. She'll go home the same time as the rest of us: When the war ends."

Gale turned his gaze back to Peeta. "So you've been helping her this whole time?"

"Helping her maintain cover, sure."

"Who's been covering for the fact that she's not a real soldier?"

"I'm just as much of a real soldier as you are, Gale," Katniss said testily. "I've been here just as long as you have. And apparently I'm better at it than you are, _Sergeant_."

Gale's face twisted in anger. "I can only guess what you did to earn that rank, _Lieutenant_."

Katniss narrowed her eyes. Most smart people began fearing for their lives when they received a look like that from Katniss Everdeen. "Just what exactly are you implying?"

Gale took no notice of her expression. "You've got quite the group of officers keeping your little secret for you," he sneered at her. "How exactly do you get so many men to cover for you? You repay them all on your back, or just Mellark?"

Katniss was on her feet in a second lunging at him, but Peeta was up just as fast, holding her around the waist as she flailed her limbs attempting to get to Gale. It didn't matter anyway, as Haymitch's fist was faster than either of them, spinning Gale from his sitting position and sending him sprawling on the ground. "I'm quite sure that statement was unnecessary," Haymitch said lazily. "Now why don't you apologize for that inconsiderate remark?"

Gale sat back up, rubbing his jaw. He glared up at Katniss, now standing but still being held by Peeta in case she jumped at Gale again. "Sorry."

Katniss glared right back. "I'm sorry, _Sir_."

Gale's face was beet red in anger, but he complied. "I'm sorry, _Sir_."

"Well, this is just entertaining as all get-out," Finnick said, breaking the tense silence. "Are you two cousins or something?"

"No," was all Gale said.

"Best friends," Katniss explained. "At least we used to be."

"'Used to be'?" Gale asked contemptuously.

Katniss glared at him again. "Yeah, used to be. Before you decided that I was sleeping with half my company. Glad to know my _best friend_ thinks so highly of me."

"Yeah, well you don't exactly look uncomfortable with Mellark's hands all over you there, Catnip," Gale said, and it was only then that Peeta and Katniss realized that he was still holding her. They self-consciously separated and sat back down awkwardly. "You tell me how you've survived in the army this long," Gale asked.

Katniss shrugged. "The same way as any other soldier: Hard work and dumb luck."

"But you're not a soldier," Gale countered.

Peeta interrupted their exchange. "For Christ's sake, Gale, you're the one who's hunted with her for years. You of all people should know how prepared she was to fight. Caesar, Finnick, Haymitch, they should have taken convincing. You should have already known."

"They don't let women in the army," Gale said matter-of-factly, "and she's a woman."

"And you're an idiot," Peeta said just as matter-of-factly. "You know how good she is with a weapon. You know how good a shot she is. You know how calm she is under pressure. You know how much endurance she has. You know how smart she is. You know how tenacious and determined she is. If you don't think that those things make her a great soldier, then you're an idiot, and I'm relieved as hell to have her watching my back rather than you."

"Hear, hear!" Finnick and Caesar heartedly endorsed Peeta's impromptu speech. Katniss squirmed slightly, uncomfortable with praise as always, but she had been becoming more and more comfortable hearing it from Peeta. He spent so much time praising her, in big ways and small, he was starting to wear her down, starting to make her believe it. It was one of the things she liked about him, when she allowed herself to admit that there were things she liked about him.

"So what's the deal with you two?" Gale asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Peeta asked.

"Like I said, you two look real comfy together. And that would only figure, considering you've been living together for the past two years and all."

Peeta frowned at what he was implying. He was at the same time angry at Gale that he would suggest such a thing about he and Katniss, and also disappointed that it wasn't more true.

Katniss scowled at him. She was angry at the suggestion, and angry at herself for kind of wanting it to be true. Maybe. A little. In a way.

"We're friends," she said, and left it at that.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Gale said.

"What, they don't share tents in your company?" Caesar asked.

"Not with girls!" Gale said emphatically.

"Keep your voice down!" at least three people insisted at the same time.

Silence reigned for another bit until Gale spoke up again. "So everyone buys that you're a guy named Kat Everdeen?"

"They buy it enough that nobody asks questions," Katniss said. "If I was incompetent, or if I wasn't pulling my own load, or if I was an asshole, then maybe folks would be looking at me harder. But as it is, to whatever extent they suspect, nobody cares enough to make a big deal."

Gale just shakes his head. "I can't believe you. Don't you know how dangerous this is?"

"Remember who you're talking to, Gale," Katniss said tersely. "I've been here just as long as you. Fought in just as many battles. I was at Antietam. I was at Gettysburg. I was at Cold Harbor."

"How can you see all of that and still stay here?" Gale asked. "Why don't you go home?"

"Why don't _you_ go home?" Katniss asked forcefully. She shook off Peeta's attempt to restrain her and stood up to glare down at Gale, clenching her fists at her sides as she spoke. "If you're so concerned about the danger, go ahead and run home. But I'm staying. I'm staying here with my new brothers, who risk their lives for me just like I risk my life for them. I'm staying for the dead, for the soldiers who gave their lives for this army; I'll see this through to the end on behalf of the men who aren't here to do it for themselves anymore. I'm staying to fight for my country, because a bunch of rebel hotheads can't just tear it in two whenever they feel like it. I'm staying for the slaves, cause one visit to one plantation was enough to cure me of any notion that it wasn't my problem. You want to desert, Gale, you go right ahead. I'm staying. I'm fighting. I'm not leaving until we claim our victory. I won't go home a quitter, I'm going to go home a victor."

The applause startled them all. They looked up to find that Katniss's tirade had been attracting the attention of passing soldiers; by the time she had finished, there was quite a sizable group gathered. They could hear the occasional comment from the crowd.

"What happened?"

"What sparked all of that?"

"Is that Sergeant Hawthorne from the 47th?"

"I guess that guy was talking about quitting and going home, and Lieutenant Everdeen set him straight."

"Everdeen really put Hawthorne in his place."

"That Lieutenant Everdeen is a hell of an officer."

"Man, I'd follow that guy anywhere."

"Everdeen is on fire!"

"Guess now we know how he can be a Lieutenant that young."

"All right, boys, show's over," General Abernathy said. "I'm sure you all have camps to return to." The crowd began to drift away, leaving them with their privacy once again.

"They're right, Kat," Finnick said. "That was amazing."

Katniss sat down and began fidgeting again, uncomfortable with praise as always. Without thinking of what the gesture meant, Peeta reached out and placed a hand on her knee to steady her. "Just accept it. That was pretty incredible."

Katniss looked up at him, nodded a bit, and finally offered a small smile.

"I wonder what they'd think if they knew that big speech had come from a woman pretending to be a soldier," Gale sneered.

"I'm sure that if someone were to tell them, that person would find themselves facing lashes for insubordination towards a superior officer," Haymitch said easily, handing Gale a slip of paper. "Here's my reply to Colonel Boggs. Go deliver it like a good boy, and if you have any sense in that head of yours, you'll table this discussion until after the war." Haymitch waved him off. "Now, on your way, Sergeant Hawthorne."

Gale gave everyone one more glare before standing and stomping off.

"Well," Finnick said, "That was interesting."

"I'm sorry about that, guys," Katniss said. "Normally Gale's a great guy. But he's always had a temper, and he's always been a bit overprotective of me."

"Sounds like he doesn't really like women, either," Caesar said.

"I don't know where that came from," Katniss said, truly mystified. "Gale and I have been hunting together since I was twelve and he was fourteen."

"That reminds me," Caesar said, "I have no idea how old you actually are, Katnip is it?"

Katniss flushed. She decided she may as well be honest with this group. These were the people she truly trusted, truly considered friends. "I'm 20 now, Peeta and I are the same age. And my name is Katniss. Catnip is just a stupid nickname Gale came up with when we were kids."

"Well, pleased to finally meet you, Katniss," Caesar said with a grin as he stuck out his hand. Katniss grinned back as she dramatically took his hand and shook.

In the end, even though Gale was an ass, Katniss was forever thankful for his visit that night, because it prompted her true introduction to her friend and comrade Captain Caesar.

He was killed in action two days later.

…..

_January 15, 1865_

Katniss was growing more and more frustrated. She and Peeta were supposed to be on forage duty, collecting firewood for the next few days. And if Katniss took some time to bag some game to supplement their rations, so much the better. But instead of doing any of that, she was looking for Peeta, who was lost in the woods.

Again.

He was doing this on purpose. He had to be. Not even he could get this lost this quickly, not with the snow cover the way it was. If she was being honest, he was actually doing a pretty good job of covering his tracks. He had looped back on his own trail so many times that she had no idea which of his tracks she should be following. It was pretty effective, she grudgingly had to admit to herself.

She would not give him the satisfaction of admitting it to him.

To be fair, Peeta was not the major source of her frustration. She'd been in a foul mood of one sort or another for months now. Ever since the double-whammy of her contentious encounter with Gale and the loss of Caesar back in November, really. When Caesar had died, he had been the last member of the company other than Peeta who had been there when she had arrived less than three years ago. Everyone else had either died like Caesar and Marvel, or been promoted out of the company like Abernathy and Odair. The whole company now was just her, Peeta, and a bunch of kids.

Two 20-year-olds referring to the rest of their company as kids.

It wasn't like she was previously unaware of the extreme mortality of her situation. In the last two and a half years she had lost too many friends and comrades to count. As she had told Gale the night before Caesar died, she had been in the middle of some of the most horrific fighting this war had to offer. And for every soldier that died in battle, two or three were lost to disease. She had been able to bear up under all of it. She had already borne so much in her life, it seemed she was well trained for even this aspect of warfare. She only broke at night, in her sleep, and when she did Peeta always put her back together by morning. But somehow, being the last two left cast their jeopardy in such stark terms that it began to wear on even her steely resolve. It was harder and harder to ignore the possibility of her death, or the possibility of Peeta's death.

Sometimes she wasn't sure which one of those scared her more.

Having to break in the new kids was a task she took no joy in. Somehow, even after all this time, the army still had soldiers who had never been in combat. Never looked across the field at a Confederate skirmishing line and feared for their lives. A bunch of glory-seeking jackasses who couldn't wait until it was their turn to see the elephant.

And Colonel Odair's choice of who to promote to replace Caesar as company commander in charge of all these jackasses was probably her greatest annoyance of all.

Ironically, it was her company's recent rotation away from the front lines at Petersburg that had really started fraying Katniss's nerves. Both armies had settled in for the winter –though nobody who grew up with Pennsylvania blizzards could ever call this Virginia weather 'winter' – and General Abernathy wanted to make sure his troops were rested and ready, just in case something major happened unexpectedly. Thus this new rotation, giving each company time away from the front.

Everyone seemed to like the idea. Everyone but Katniss, that is. At least at the front there was the enemy to concentrate on. For the next few weeks, baring a breakthrough, she didn't even have that. She understood what Haymitch was trying to achieve. In theory more rest was always a good thing. But in practice what it gave Katniss was too much time to think and not enough to do.

It really should have been two of the kids out here chopping wood, but Katniss had jumped at the chance to spend some time in the woods, and to finally _do_ something. And naturally, Peeta had jumped at the chance to accompany her.

She remembered a time when that would have bothered her. Now it kind of bothered her that it didn't. She felt like she should find Peeta's constant presence in her life bothersome, intrusive, suffocating. But instead she found it oddly…

…comforting?

She finally heard Peeta's heavy gait - it was a wonder his tread had never given their position away to the enemy, really - and made her way over to him. He broke into a wide grin at the sight of her, and she groaned. She knew what was coming when she saw that grin.

"Captain Everdeen, sir! So glad to see you, sir! I've been trying to find you, sir!"

Katniss rolled her eyes. Coming from anyone else, the constant emphasis on her new rank would be blatant jealousy, but she knew Peeta only did it to get a rise out of her. "Peeta, if you call me 'sir' one more time, I'm going to start giving you orders," she warned.

"Sir! Yes, sir! Sorry, sir! My apologies, sir! The lieutenant will try to remember not to call you sir, sir!"

Katniss rolled her eyes again, but she let out a soft laugh, which only made Peeta's grin grow wider. "Come on," she said, "if we don't get going on this we'll never finish."

"Isn't that the point?" Peeta asked. "I thought we were here because you wanted to get away from the kids for a while and spend some time in the woods. Now you're in a hurry to get back?"

She was about to snap off a retort, when she decided not to bother. "You're right," she said. "But let's get the wood chopped and ready first."

This time Peeta actually snapped off a mocking salute. "Aye, aye, Captain."

She gave him a playful shove, prompting him to laugh again. One thing she did not anticipate was how much of a goofball Peeta could be. He didn't get a lot of opportunity to display that side of himself in the middle of the war, but with the sudden abundance of downtime he had taken it upon herself to improve her foul mood. He had been acting irrepressibly silly for more than a week now. The most shocking thing was how much she enjoyed it.

None of her reactions to Peeta made any sense to her anymore.

Once they actually got down to work, they made quick work of the firewood gathering. Peeta had picked up a few techniques from his time working forage duty with Joe Mason that helped make the job go faster. They left their cart loaded and ready to go while they spent the afternoon wasting time and putting off their return to camp. Katniss brought in a decent haul hunting, and they made a lunch for themselves from one of the rabbits. They shared happy memories of home, as they often did when they had time to fill; Katniss talking about hunting or telling stories about Prim and Peeta reminiscing about baking with his father. They allowed the peace and solitude of the woods lull them into a short nap. They spent quite a while slinging handfuls of snow at each other, an altercation started by Peeta, of course. Katniss surprised herself again with how much she enjoyed such a juvenile pursuit; she thought Peeta was acting like an undisciplined child, and she didn't even want to think about being caught by any of the other soldiers who might have been out in the woods that day, but she found herself forgetting her worries and screaming laughing right along with Peeta as they chased each other with their snowy ammunition.

They were making their way back to their cart, tired and sore and wet and cold but grinning like idiots, when they found a tall man in Union blue eyeing their load of firewood.

"Something catch your interest, soldier?" Peeta called out as they approached. In the state they were in, neither of them wanted to have to replace their load of wood because it had been poached by another soldier.

But as they got closer and the soldier turned to face them, they both knew that the man eyeing their load was no stranger to poaching.

"Hello, Gale," Peeta greeted him warily.

Gale answered with a gruff nod. "Mellark."

"What's your interest in our firewood?" Katniss asked.

"Just wondering who abandoned it," he said carefully. "I thought I heard someone screaming before."

Katniss blushed deep red and looked down at the ground. The last thing she wanted was to have to tell Gale that she spent her day in the woods having a snow fight. With Katniss silenced in embarrassment, Peeta was left to stammer, "That's, um, that was nothing. There's no- er, everything's fine."

Gale gave them both a long look. "Okay," he finally said.

They stood in awkward silence for a while. Katniss had both wanted and dreaded to see Gale again after their last meeting. She wanted to find out what had happened to her friend, and why he had lashed out at her like he did that day. But whenever she thought about it, the hurt and the anger about what happened quickly overwhelmed any other feelings she had, and they did so again now. Peeta was obviously staying quiet to see how she wanted to handle the situation, and Gale looked like he was unsure what to say, so it was left to her to finally speak up, with her hurt and anger smothering any feelings of friendship or affection she held for the man who was once as close as a brother. "So you found us. Do you need anything else, Sergeant?"

Gale grimaced at her gruff tone. "'Sergeant'? Really? Is that where we are now?"

"You tell me, Gale. The first time I see my friend in more than two years, and all he does is insult me. He says I'm incompetent and useless and he accuses me of bedding every man in sight. I could really do without that today, so I think Peeta and I are just going to take our cart and go."

Gale sighed. "Look, can we talk, Katniss?"

Katniss was nowhere near being ready to let her anger go. "You don't think you did enough talking the last time we saw each other?" she spat at him.

Gale struggled for a moment trying to come up with a response, and it was Peeta who spoke up first. "Katniss…"

She turned her ire on her comrade. She was shocked that Peeta wasn't backing her up, and more than a bit surprised at just how deep her feelings of betrayal were. "Don't you take his side in this. Don't try to excuse the things he said."

"You know I would never do that. You know I'm always here for you, no matter what," he said, his voice thick with sincerity in the way she had never heard in anyone's voice but Peeta's. It was enough to mollify her hurt feelings long enough for him to explain himself.

They were both too focused on each other for either of them to notice Gale's reaction to their exchange.

"How much time have you spent in the last two years wishing you could talk to Gale?" Peeta asked, and Katniss's angry façade faltered for a moment. She was unable to counter his point; she had indeed spent much of her time in the army, especially the year and a half since Gettysburg, wishing there was a way she could communicate with Gale. Now here he was, and he already knew her secret about being in the army. Regardless of the hurtful things he had said at their last meeting, they had been friends for eight years. They had struggled and suffered together. They had survived together. She wasn't ready to throw all of that away.

Katniss didn't say anything, but Peeta could see the change in her demeanor and knew he had won her over. It was a bittersweet victory, to be sure. He knew exactly what Gale wanted to talk to her about. He knew exactly why the idea of Katniss spending two years with him had sent Gale into such a maelstrom of anger. He, better than almost anyone, knew what it looked like when a man was in love with Katniss Everdeen. And yet here he was helping Gale, arguing with Katniss on Gale's behalf. Because he knew Gale was her closest friend. Because he knew that if she lost that friendship, she would always regret it. She would always miss Gale, regardless of how angry she was with him at the moment.

He really was too nice for his own good sometimes.

"Why don't I go get lost in the woods again?" he suggested with a weak smile. "You can come rescue me when you're ready to go back to camp."

Katniss hesitated a moment before nodding at him. "Okay. I'll see you later." When he was several yards away she called after him, "Don't get too lost." He just waved back at her, so she added, "That's an order, Lieutenant!"

"Aye aye, Captain," he threw over his shoulder before he was lost in a copse of trees.

She couldn't help but smile a bit at Peeta's joke, as always, but she quickly lost her grin when she turned and saw the frown on Gale's face. "What, Gale? What's pissing you off now?"

"I'm just trying to understand what I just saw," Gale said. "Did you just take someone's advice? Did you just let someone tell you what to do?"

Katniss scowled at him. He was right, she wasn't always the best at accepting advice, but she didn't understand why he was being so hostile towards Peeta. Gale had always harbored some resentment toward the merchant families in Panem, but Peeta was a fellow soldier. "As loathe as I am to admit it, he's usually right. He's not a hotheaded idiot like some other people I know."

Gale had the decency to look chagrinned at the accusation in her tone. "Does a hotheaded idiot get a chance to apologize?"

"I'm not sure I can forgive the things you said," she answered honestly.

"Come on, Catnip. I was just so angry that you had hidden this from me, and that you had put yourself in such danger."

Katniss wasn't buying his excuse. "And that's why you said I couldn't do anything because I'm a woman? When you know that I'm a better shot and a better tracker than most of this army, including you? That's why you said I was fucking a half-dozen different men, when you know I've never so much as courted anyone?" She paused for a moment, but Gale had no ready response. "If you want to be pissed at me, fine. If you wish I was home safe, then fine. But what you said has nothing to do with any of that. I know we have our blow-ups sometimes, but what you said last fall was so far over the line, Gale. I don't think I can just forgive and forget."

Gale did look genuinely remorseful, at least. "Look, I'm sorry I said that stuff. I really am. I didn't mean it the way you're saying, I just wanted you to go home so you'd be safe. You know how I get when I'm angry. But god, Katniss, don't you think I have a right to be angry about this? You disappeared for years, and nobody would tell me anything. I was worried sick! And it's no exaggeration that I had half of Panem looking for you, I had everyone in the 47th write home and ask their parents and their wives if they had heard anything about you. I didn't know if you had been in some accident and you were keeping it secret, if you had died and my family didn't want to tell me by mail, if you had simply vanished one day and nobody knew what happened to you… I had so many crazy ideas. And then I finally find you, and it turns out you've been intentionally hiding from me. Intentionally lying to me, and getting your family to lie to me too. Not only that, but you've been in the war. Risking your life every day. Heck, I'm lucky I got to see you alive at all! Plus, you had this whole group of men you felt close enough to that they got the truth while I was fed lies. I thought we were as close as family, but you lied to me while you were honest with them, so what does that say?"

Katniss actually felt guilty for just a moment, because he was right, they were as close as family and she had lied to him. But as quickly as she started feeling some sympathy for Gale's position, he made sure to wipe it away. "Not to mention you were all cozy with Mellark-"

Katniss cut him off. Gale may have had a point about how she hid from him, though she still thought she was justified there, but his antagonism towards Peeta was really getting on her nerves. "Why do you keep bringing up Peeta? What's your problem with him?"

Gale opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped and shook his head a bit. "You know, you can be really dense sometimes."

Katniss bristled at the casual insult. "Well, you'll just have to speak slowly. Use small words. I am just a woman, after all."

"I already apologized for that," Gale said weakly.

"And I haven't accepted yet," Katniss countered. "So, explain yourself. I serve in a company with a hundred men, in a regiment with a thousand, in a division with ten thousand. Why is the presence of Peeta Mellark such an offense to you?"

"Because he's more than just another soldier to you," Gale said.

"So now you're calling me a whore again?" Katniss said, her anger growing. "That kind of undercuts your apology from earlier."

"That's not what I meant," Gale said. He huffed out a breath of frustration. Whether he was more frustrated with his inability to make himself clear or Katniss's complete lack of understanding, he didn't know. "I'm just saying, you trust him. You let him touch you. You're so comfortable with him holding on to you that you didn't even notice it until I pointed it out. You let him talk you into this, and he didn't even have to try all that hard. You never trust anybody, it took you years to trust me, but you trust him."

Gale was getting uncomfortably close to topics Katniss didn't want to discuss and truths she didn't want to admit, not even to herself. "I've been serving with him for more than two years," she said. "He's my second-in-command of this company. If I didn't trust him, we'd have some serious problems."

"You trust him as more than just a fellow soldier," Gale accused.

"He _is_ my fellow soldier," Katniss countered. "He's the only other soldier in the company that has been here as long as I have. He's saved my life more times than I can count."

"He's not the only one who's saved your life," Gale said, an accusatory tone sneaking into his voice.

Katniss scowled at him. "We saved each other, Gale. Don't make it more than it was."

"More than it was?" Gale echoed indignantly. "What was it exactly?"

"We worked together. We helped each other. It's not like I owe you anything."

Gale scoffed angrily. "Christ, Katniss, I didn't think you spent time with me because you _owed_ it to me."

"Then what were you saying?" Katniss asked, struggling to control her own growing anger. "Look, I get why you were angry, but you know why I had to hide from you. You would have done everything you could to get me kicked out of the army, in fact that's what you _did_ do as soon as you found out. If you can forgive me for hiding from you, then I'll forgive you for not trusting me enough to make my own decision. But none of that explains why you're madder about Peeta than you are about me. He hasn't done anything to hurt me. He's my friend, just like you're my friend."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Gale said darkly.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she asked, growing more and more frustrated by the discussion. She didn't seem to be getting any closer to figuring out what exactly was upsetting Gale so much. "I'm not allowed to have more than one friend now?"

Gale shook his head. "Sometimes I just don't get you, Catnip. You can spot a snow hare a quarter-mile away but you can't see what's right in front of your face. You can't see when another man is trying to take you away from me."

Finally, it dawned on Katniss what he was trying to say. There had always been rumors about the two of them, but there was no truth to them. They didn't feel like that about each other. At least she didn't. And neither did he, she tried to reassure herself.

She tried to talk, but her throat was closed. "Take-?"

"I don't remember exactly when I fell in love with you," Gale continued as if she hadn't spoken. "It wasn't when we first met, not for a few years after that. I remember one time we took down this huge buck, and you had the widest smile on your face. You never smile, but this was a special day and your whole face lit up, and for the first time I thought, god I want to kiss her." Katniss tried to respond, but even if she could force air through her constricted throat she had no idea what she would try to say.

"I love everything about you," Gale continued. "I love how you take in a little gasp of air after every shot you take. I love the way your nose crinkles when an animal jerks left instead of right and your shot doesn't go where you wanted it. I love how you don't take shit from even the haughtiest merchants. I love the little blush that rises on your cheeks when we fight. I love that you can give as good as you get." He paused for a moment, and sighed heavily. "And I know you don't feel the same way about me. I know you've never seen me as anything more than a friend. But I thought…" He trailed off, and kicked at the ground in frustration. "I really thought one day you might. You never showed any interest in anyone else, and I thought that eventually you'd want to settle down with someone, and it'd be me. Maybe not for a while, maybe not till after Prim was married and living on her own, but one day. One day we'd finally be together, the way everyone but you always thought we should be."

Katniss was struggling to understand everything he had just said. It was like her whole life had been turned on its side. She and Gale had hunted together for years, and in all that time he had never given any indication that he thought of her as anything other than a friend. All of a sudden she had to reevaluate the last several years she and Gale had spent together, now that she had this new information.

Her only experience with a man being interested in her that way was Peeta, and the two experiences couldn't be more different. She had at first doubted Peeta's sincerity, but over the years she had warmed to him, and he was now one of the most important people in her life, right up there with Prim and Gale. Gale's confession had the exact opposite effect on her; she didn't for a moment doubt that he was being truthful, but the revelation made her want to draw back, to put distance between her and Gale's feelings, both figuratively and literally. She didn't want to take any chances of accidentally giving him any reason to believe that she returned his feelings.

That thought left her confused, but not for any reason having to do with Gale. Her immediate reaction to Gale's confession of love was to draw away from him to make sure he didn't think she felt similarly, but she felt no such compunction with Peeta. She and Peeta had only grown closer after he confessed his feelings; she still routinely shared things with him that she could never imagine sharing with anyone else. Her secrets, her feelings, her deepest fears. Not to mention her bed. If she was being honest with herself, she knew that they were more than just friends, but what were they exactly? And why had she had such opposite reactions to Peeta's and Gale's quite similar declarations? Could it mean that she actually returned Peeta's feelings of love?

That question, more than anything else about Gale's confession, left her mentally reeling. She had never made time or space for love in her life, dismissing it as an unnecessary distraction and secretly being afraid that if she ever let herself fall in love, it would have the same disastrous effect on her that it had had on her mother. She had spent the past few years telling herself that what she shared with Peeta was just a necessity of the war, that when they went home they could be normal friends, like she and Gale were. But now the revelation of Gale's true feelings was forcing her to realize that she wasn't friends with Peeta the way she was friends with Gale, that she shared something much deeper and more powerful with Peeta, and that thought frightened her, because she didn't know how to deal with it.

Gale could see the turmoil on her face, and he knew her well enough to know why it was there. He kind of hated to do this to her, but sometimes his Catnip could be one of the most willfully oblivious people he knew. Even if he had to force it on her, she deserved to know the truth, about him and about Peeta. And about herself.

He had a weak, sad smile on his face when he resumed speaking. "But now I'm too late, aren't I?"

"Gale-" Katniss tried, but she still didn't know what to say, and so fell silent again.

"I can see it in you now, you're falling for him," Gale said. "You're falling for Mellark."

Katniss tried to deny it, she wanted desperately to deny it, even two minutes earlier she would have vehemently denied it, but now the best she could do was stand silent and not admit to it. Gale ran a hand over his face and let out a heavy breath into his palm. "God, I must have been blind not to see it before. There was too much happening that night, I was shocked and relieved and angry and hurt, and jealous, so so jealous, and I couldn't see what was right in front of my face. Couldn't or wouldn't, I guess." He shook his head and chuckled a bit. "It's a wonder your whole company hasn't figured out who you are just based on how you two act around each other."

As time had passed and Gale had continued to speak, Katniss had slowly begun trying to reign in her frazzled mind, trying to recover from the afternoon's revelations and put her thoughts back in order. She had been working up the necessary stability and control to deny everything Gale was saying. But when she opened her mouth to speak, something very different came out. "How do we act around each other?"

Gale gave her a small, knowing smile; there was an admission in her question. As much as she hated that he knew her so well, as much as she hated the blush she could feel heating her cheeks, Katniss couldn't help but relax a bit. The conversation was beginning to feel more like the comfortable coexistence she and Gale had shared before the war. She greedily welcomed the return of her longtime friend, and as much as she wanted to deny what he was saying about her feelings toward Peeta, she knew she couldn't lie to him. He knew her almost as well as she knew herself. Better, sometimes.

"You're way too comfortable touching each other," Gale said in answer to her question. "I can't imagine what it looks like to someone who thinks you're a man."

"It doesn't look good," slipped out of Katniss's mouth before she could stop it. Now that Gale was acting more like the friend she knew and not a jilted lover, now that she was relaxing into their discussion, she wasn't thinking as carefully about what she was saying, and her thoughts were coming out of her mouth more freely than she would have preferred. She knew Gale wouldn't let her remark go, so she sighed and explained. "There have been rumors about us in camp, from time to time. Nobody makes anything of it, it's very live-and-let-live when there are bullets flying, but we know they talk about us."

"They suspect you're a woman?" Gale asked.

"No, they suspect we're sodomites."

For just a moment Gale's whole face went slack with surprise, then he began laughing as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He tried to reply coherently, but all that came out of his mouth was "You… They… He… Hahahahahaha!" before his laughter overcame him again.

Katniss quickly grew frustrated with his reaction. "It's not that funny," she said, shoving him in the shoulder.

Gale tried to reign in his laughter, but was only partly successful. "Come on! Your regiment will believe that, but it doesn't occur to them that you're a girl? That's pretty funny."

It _was_ kind of funny, but she wasn't about to admit that to him. "Shut up," she said with another, softer shove, dipping her head to hide her own amusement.

Gale decided to let it go. "Listen, Katniss, I'm pretty sure Mellark knows how he feels about you. He's too damn genuine, the look on his face gives him away like a shop sign. Has he told you he has feelings for you?"

"Yes," she admitted quietly, her eyes remaining fixed on the ground at his feet.

"Hmm," Gale huffed. "Braver man than me." The admission surprised Katniss, so much that she looked up and met his gaze. "Do me a favor. Don't mess this up. Don't risk losing this because you're afraid to admit you want it. Mellark's a good guy; I can't say I'm happy to see you with someone other than me, but you could do a lot worse."

_I don't think I could do any better_ , she just managed not to say. Once she was sure that that wouldn't come out of her mouth when she opened it, she asked, "Why do you say he's a good guy? You don't know him. You don't even call him by his name."

"He just tried to push the girl he loves into the arms of another man, because he thought that's what she wanted," he said, sadness thick in his voice. "I know how hard that is, cause I'm trying to return the favor, and it's killing me."

"Gale…" she began, but found it difficult to complete a sentence. Emotion was thick in the atmosphere surrounding their conversation, emotion she had no experience and little interest in dealing with. But her mind was finally settling itself, and with clearer thinking her instinct for denial reasserted itself. "Gale, you've got all of this wrong," she said, finally able to form the words even if her voice still lacked conviction. "I'm not interested in Peeta that way. I'm not interested in anyone that way."

Gale just shook his head at her. "You can tell yourself that, but I know you better. I can see how you act around him. I can see how you trust him. If you're not in love yet, you're on your way there. If you'll allow it."

His phrasing grabbed her attention. She had said that to Peeta once. A million years ago, it felt like. Before this interminable siege. Before Cold Harbor. Before the Wilderness. Before Gettysburg. Back when so many of their comrades were still alive. Back when she was so young and naïve that she thought it couldn't get any worse than Antietam. Way back then, Peeta had asked her to let him be her friend, and she had allowed it. She had allowed a lot more than that in the time since then, truth be told, allowed it without really thinking about it.

But she would not allow _this_. She would not allow herself to fall in love. Not with Peeta, not with Gale, not with anyone. Not when any of them could be killed tomorrow. Not when there was a war to win. Not when she had Prim to take care of. She couldn't afford to let herself be distracted by something as dangerous as _love_.

"You're wrong, Gale," she repeated, her voice hardening.

"All right," Gale said, not at all believing her. "After all of this is over, when we're all back in Panem, I'll come see you, and we'll see who's wrong." His mouth ticked up with the hint of a smirk. "If you're still in denial then, maybe I won't give up so easily. Maybe you'll marry me after all."

Katniss just huffed out a breath. She wanted to say something smart back to him, to dismiss his ridiculous idea out of hand. But she didn't want to completely trample his feelings after he had trusted her with them. She didn't want to break her best friend's heart. So instead she just said, "I should go find Peeta. I shouldn't let him get too lost."

Gale smiled indulgently at her. "Of course. Obviously you don't want you to lose Peeta." Katniss scowled at him; he just laughed at her response. "How lost do you think he is? Do you want my help tracking him down?"

"Oh, he's not lost, not really," she said. "But a little help wouldn't hurt. He's surprisingly inventive at hiding himself."

Thirty minutes later, he saw what she meant. Katniss let Gale take the lead in following Peeta's tracks, and amused herself watching him become more and more frustrated with the hunt. Peeta hadn't doubled-back on himself to the same degree as he had when he was evading Katniss earlier in the day, but he still managed to trip them up a time or two. When they came to the same clearing for the third time, Gale threw up his hands in frustration. "I swear there are more tracks here now than there were the last time we were here!"

Katniss chuckled to herself. "I think I have an idea how to find him."

"Then by all means, lead the way!"

But she didn't go anywhere. Instead she raised her voice, and called out, "Lieutenant Mellark! Present yourself for inspection!"

"Aye aye, Captain Katniss!" a voice called out from behind and to the left of her, confirming her suspicion that Peeta was hiding within earshot. She turned to see Peeta stepping out from behind a large tree, followed by another Union soldier, a thickly-muscled black man even taller than Gale. "You may have found me," Peeta said, gesturing to his companion, "but look who I found."

Even with the heavy tension of the afternoon, Katniss couldn't help the wide smile that took over her face. "Thresh!" She jogged over and surprised herself a bit when she gave the man a quick hug. "It's so good to see you, Thresh." She pulled back and took a good look at him. " _Sergeant_ Thresh," she amended.

"Sergeant Seeder, actually," he corrected her. "Army recruiter said I had to have a surname for my enlistment forms, so I used my mama's name."

"That's great." Katniss had a million questions she wanted to ask, but before she could ask any of them she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to find Gale just behind her, his face writ with confusion.

"Uhhh, Katniss?" he asked, but then immediately realized his mistake. "Er, um, I mean, Kat!" Even as he was rushing to cover for his error, he belatedly realized that Peeta had just used Katniss's real name in front of this man. Meaning he had just made himself sound like an idiot for nothing. He spied Peeta over Katniss's shoulder, trying to contain a laugh, and scowled at him.

"It's all right, Gale," Katniss said. She smiled at his discomfort, which only made his scowl deeper. "This is Thresh, he's a friend of ours." Something about the casual way she said that made his gut churn; _ours_ , meaning hers and Mellark's. They were already a unit. Even if he had acknowledged that fact earlier, it didn't make it hurt any less to see it in front of his face.

Katniss turned back to the larger man. "Thresh, this is my friend Gale. He's a friend from back home," she said, hoping he would understand her implication.

"So he knows?" he asked her, wanting to be sure. At her nod, Thresh extended his hand. Gale, not knowing what else to do, shook it. "Gale…" he said as if trying to place a memory. "Are you Rory's brother?"

Gale froze, and narrowed his eyes at the newcomer. "How do you know Rory?"

"Thresh and his friend Rue have been staying in Panem for a while," Peeta supplied.

"Rue and Prim are practically best friends now," Thresh explained. "And Rory follows that girl around like a puppy on a leash."

Despite his discomfort with this colored man who seemed to be Katniss's new best friend - seriously, since when did Catnip hug people? - Gale found himself smiling. Thresh had certainly described Rory accurately enough; he and Prim had been sweet on each other for years now.

"How is Prim?" Katniss asked eagerly.

Thresh smiled at that. "She's doing well. Misses you something awful. She and Rue spend hours talking about you; Prim wants to know all about what you're like as a soldier, and Rue wants to know all about what you're like at home. It's cute."

"That's where he got to know Rory so well," Peeta explained. "The two of them are left on their own while the girls tell stories about you."

"Wait, Rory knows about me being here?" Katniss asked.

"Prim told him," Thresh answered. "Don't get too mad at her, he hasn't told a soul, not even his mama. I don't think Prim could keep a secret from Rory if she tried."

"You know that's true, Catnip," Gale said. "So, how did you all meet?"

The three of them haltingly told the story of how they had met, frequently checking with each other to make sure they were sticking to safe topics, skipping over personal details like the abuse Rue had suffered, Katniss's bread story, and any mention of Peeta's mother. Gale could tell he was only getting half the story, it was obvious from the way they would all glace at each other before one of them would finally say something, or the way one would begin a sentence only to abandon it at a sharp glare from another. It irked him, and it hurt him, that these two men – two men now! – were privy to secrets that Catnip wouldn't trust him with. He tried to reassure himself that once this was all over, once they were back together in Panem, then they could work everything out. Then they would be as close as siblings again. And in the back of his mind, he hadn't completely abandoned his hope for more.

Thresh filled an eager Katniss in on his and Rue's experiences since they had last seen each other almost two years earlier. He and Rue had indeed found shelter with the Undersees as Katniss had suggested, Rue working for the family as a housekeeper and Thresh as a field hand to help earn their keep. Rue and Prim had become fast friends, which lead to a parallel friendship between Thresh and Rory. Rory, though he was only 16, was eager to join the fight, a fact that concerned Gale greatly. The last thing he wanted was his little brother in the army facing enemy fire.

With Dr. Marcus having been drafted into the army in the summer of '63, Prim and her mother were the only ones left in Panem for anyone seeking medical care. Prim thrived with the new responsibilities, using her own caring instincts and the skills her mother had taught her to skillfully treat all manner of illnesses and injuries. Katniss beamed at the description of her little sister taking care of the remaining Panem residents; she knew Prim was in her natural element when she was taking care of someone.

The Hawthornes were doing well. Rory was still too young to work in the deep mines, but the mining company hired younger boys to do odd jobs outside the mine, and Rory was finding as many of them as he could, his pay combining with the money Gale sent home each week and the proceeds from the in-home laundry business Hazelle had started after her husband died to support the family quite nicely. Hazelle had roped Vick into helping her with the washing to keep him form following his brother to the mines, though it was only a temporary fix. Unless you owned one of the shops in town, there was really only one employer in Panem for men over 18.

Thresh had little news to share with Peeta; since Peeta didn't want his mother to know where he was, Thresh couldn't just go to the bakery and introduce himself as Peeta's friend. The one time he had tried going there on the pretense of buying some bread, Mrs. Mellark had chased him away, loudly informing him that they didn't serve "his kind" there. Peeta hadn't really expected anything different.

When Thresh had learned that the army was enlisting colored troops in Philadelphia, some of Rory's fervor began to rub off on him. It didn't sit right with him that a million white men were on the front lines fighting for black freedom while he was tending crops in Pennsylvania. He waited until after the fall harvest to truly consider the idea, as he felt he owed Mr. Undersee at least the full season of work, but once the harvest was in he could think of no reason to stay other than cowardice. Rue feared for his safety and begged him not to enlist, but in the end his conscience would not let him stay. There were millions of slaves still waiting for the day when a troop of Union soldiers would march through and deliver their new freedom. He wanted that day to be as soon as possible. He wanted to help free those men and women still enslaved, like Peeta and Katniss had helped free him. It was shortly after the winter holidays when he had made the trip to Philadelphia and signed up.

"And now we're almost there," he concluded. "Every day we're getting closer to the day when Lee has to give up Richmond. Sherman already tore up Georgia, rumor is he's going to lay into South Carolina any day now. It's only a matter of time now, soon the rebellion will be crushed and all men will be free."

"And the women too, right?" Katniss asked, giving Thresh a gentle nudge in the ribs.

Soon enough, the sun began to dip down towards the horizon, signaling the end to the impromptu reunions of the day. Gale, needing some time to himself to think about everything, claimed to be late for a curfew and left on his own. Thresh stayed with Katniss and Peeta for part of their trip back to camp before returning to his own regiment, the three of them able to talk more freely about more private topics without Gale there. It began to gnaw at Katniss that she could share things with these men that she couldn't share with her best friend, but they weren't all her secrets to share. For six years she had had no secrets from Gale, their lives had been too intertwined for there to be secrets between them. _Except apparently for Gale's deepest feelings_ , she thought wryly. But for the past two and a half years, they had lived separate lives. She had shared history with Peeta and Thresh that Gale knew nothing about. He undoubtedly had similar bonds with men from his regiment. Who would they be by the time they returned home? Surely not the same people they were before. Would the two people who returned home after this war ever be as close as the two people who left home in '62? She could only hope so.

Once Thresh left to return to his camp, the silence weighed heavily between Katniss and Peeta. Katniss hesitated to say anything, knowing that Peeta would want to know how things went between her and Gale. She knew he would never ask her to tell him, but somehow that only made her feel more obligated to speak. "So. Gale loves me."

Peeta's eyes widened slightly, but after a moment he just nodded. "Yeah."

Katniss let out a frustrated groan. "What, did everybody know that but me?"

"Possibly," Peeta said with a light laugh. He became serious when he saw how genuinely angry Katniss was feeling. "To tell you the truth, before I got to know you, I thought the two of you were already together. I think most people in Panem did. Surely you knew that?"

"Of course. I knew what people said about us. But I never gave it any thought, I didn't care what people thought. We were just friends."

"Apparently not," Peeta said gently.

That brought Katniss up short. "Huh. Apparently not."

"So when's the wedding?" Peeta asked.

Katniss's eyes widened and her jaw fell open. Did he really think-? She panicked for just a moment. She had barely made it through the discussion she had had with Gale that afternoon; she couldn't rehash the entire thing trying to explain herself to Peeta. But when she looked over at him, she saw him fighting a smile and the teasing glint in his eyes. She tried to sigh with relief and burst out laughing at the same time, and wound up choking so hard her eyes watered. She tried to hit him in the shoulder but he spun away with a laugh.

She should have known that Peeta wouldn't do that to her. He never made any demands of her. He had barely asked for her friendship. In the back of her mind, she knew what he wanted, what he must want. Both he and Gale wanted the same thing from her, but only Gale was forward enough to actually say so. Peeta gave and gave of himself without ever asking anything in return. He would probably have to be heavily drugged before he would be so forward as to ask anything of her.

For the first time she began to feel selfish for letting this go on as long as she had. She was not going to allow herself to fall in love, not the way Peeta surely hoped she would.

She didn't consciously distance herself from Peeta in the weeks that followed. It's not like they always slept next to each other, she told herself as she bedded down on her own side of the tent each night. Peeta will eventually calm on his own, she told herself as she lied awake at night listening to him thrash about. I can take care of myself, she told herself as she pushed Peeta away and urged him to return to sleep after he woke her from her nightmares. I can survive without anyone, she told herself as she waited for her heart to stop racing, as she wiped the cold sweat from her brow, as she spent her nights cold and afraid and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all. Long time no see. 132 days since my last update. Sorry about that. This chapter was completely rewritten several times before I was finally satisfied with it. I took Gale's characterization all the way from raging possessive asshole to selfless supportive brother and back again, and eventually settled at this spot on the spectrum. I hope it works.
> 
> So, amongst all the replotting and rewriting, this chapter grew into kind of a beast. I usually target 3k-4k words per chapter, and this one is over 10k. I considered splitting it into two parts, or even three, but I figured I had already made you wait so long for an update, I'd make it a good long one.
> 
> The good news is that we're in the home stretch of this story. The next chapter will cover the aftermath of the surrender at Appomattox. Who will survive the fighting to come? Who will be maimed for life? Who will be killed? What will happen to the wartime bond forged by Katniss and Peeta now that the war is over? You'll find out when I post the next chapter _exactly one week from today!_


	6. Chapter 6

_April 11, 1865_

Katniss sat in the chair by the bed, holding Peeta's hand. If anyone gave them funny looks, she ignored them. They had seen so much carnage, so much death, lost so much, she wasn't going to let a bunch of gossipy nurses affect her.

Her other arm, the one in the sling, ached horribly, but she ignored the pain. She didn't want them to give her any more morphine, she wanted to be awake and alert when Peeta woke up. She had big news to share with him, after all.

They had both been injured in the same battle, almost a week ago now. She had taken a severe blow to the head and several bayonet wounds on her forearm. The cuts were deep, and had bled heavily. The combination of the blow to the head, the blood loss, and the morphine they dosed her with had left her unconscious for days. But Peeta was so much worse.

He had been shot in the leg. Just one shot, the first he ever took after four years of war, but it obliterated a huge chunk of his calf. They didn't even send him to the field hospital for an exam, they cut off most of his lower leg on the battlefield before doing anything else.

So now she sat next to him, waiting for her arm muscles to knit back together, waiting for the buzzing in her head to clear, waiting for Peeta to emerge from the haze of morphine they had pumped him full of ever since they took his leg. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

She must have fallen asleep again, because when she woke up Peeta was awake and staring at her. "Hey," she said groggily.

"Hey," he said in return. "You're really here."

"Yeah, I am," she said. She guessed Peeta was still pretty out of it from the morphine.

"I woke up and you were there, sleeping," he said. "I was trying to figure out if you were real or if I was just imagining you."

Katniss didn't really know how to respond to that. "I'm real, Peeta."

In truth, she was kind of surprised she was here as well. For all that she and Peeta had grown closer over the course of the war, she had determined never to let it affect her, never to let it control her. She had spent the past few months putting distance between them, afraid of becoming too close, afraid she already had. But somehow this battle, seeing Peeta laying on the ground with his leg a bloody mess, seeing the blood pouring from her own arm and soaking the ground, seeing Finnick torn apart by a cannon shot and knowing he would never go home to Annie again, passing into unconsciousness not knowing if she would ever wake up or not, it had all broken something inside of her. She had spent all this time pushing Peeta away, but now she was finally willing to admit that she didn't want to do that anymore. God what a fool she'd been, wasting what might have been their last few months of their lives! Now she wanted to hold him close and never let him go. She wanted to sooth his nightmares and calm his fears. She wanted to stay with him, always. But was it too late? Maybe all these years of rejection had changed his feelings about her. Maybe he was only interested in the strong girl she used to be, not the broken shell left over at the end of this bloody war.

She wasn't likely to get any of her answers while the morphine left him so confused that he wasn't sure if she was really in the room with him or not. So she just sat there, holding his hand, hoping his mind would clear a bit more with time.

Eventually he turned to her. "What happened, Kat? We were in battle?"

"Yes. Lee was fleeing Petersburg, and we were chasing him. And we were in a battle, and you were shot. Do you remember getting shot in the leg?"

Peeta scrunched up his face, like a child trying to think really hard. Katniss tried her best to contain the smile the sight brought her. "In the leg…" Peeta said dreamily. "My leg… It feels… fuzzy…" Peeta's eyes drifted down to the end of the bed, where the sheet was clearly draped over one full leg and one that ended just below the knee. "Katniss!" he said, accidentally using her real name as a drug-addled panic consumed him. "Katniss, my leg!"

Katniss gripped his hand tighter. "Peeta," she said, but got no response. She knew she had to get him under control before some nurse showed up with another morphine shot. It was just like when he had a nightmare, but she had always had two arms to work with when she was helping him calm down after a nightmare. " _Peeta_ ," she tried again, repeating his name in an attempt to calm his panic. "Peeta, look at me. Peeta. I'm right here. Will you please look at me, Peeta?"

Finally, he turned towards her. His breathing began to slow, and the panic in his eyes began to dim. "Peeta, just look at me, and listen to me, okay? Can you do that?" Peeta just nodded in reply. "Peeta, you were shot in the leg. You know what happens, we've seen enough of it. They had no choice, if they hadn't amputated, you would have bled to death."

"You're right," Peeta said, some sense starting to seep into his morphine-dulled brain. "They would have to take it off."

"That's right," she said. "The doctors were all really happy that they were able to save your knee," she explained. "They said that you should be able to get around fine with a wooden leg."

Peeta let out a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. "Well, I don't exactly need agility to bake, I suppose. As long as I can hold myself upright, I guess I'll manage."

There it was, that indomitable Peeta optimism was back, quelling his fears once again. Katniss didn't know what to say, so she did her best to give him an encouraging smile.

After a brief lull in the conversation, Peeta spoke up again. "Guess I'm going home," he said.

Katniss decided to go ahead and tell him. "Peeta, we all are," she told him. At his confused look, she explained. "I heard yesterday, but you were still out of it from the morphine. Lee surrendered, Peeta. We've been here almost a week now. Grant's been chasing Lee across Virginia, and finally Lee gave up the ghost. There's still some fighting further south and Jeff Davis is still hiding in a hole somewhere, but it's only a matter of time now. For the most part the war's over. We're all gonna go home.

Katniss didn't know what reaction she was expecting. Joy or excitement would have been out of place after so much death. Relief, maybe? Whatever happened, she wasn't expecting the end of the war to depress him. But it seemed to have done so, as Peeta signed heavily, stared off into space, and dejectedly said, "Yeah. Home."

She was truly unsettled by his reaction. Had she said something wrong? Was his mind still muddled by the morphine? "Yes, home, Peeta. Where no one is trying to kill us. Where we can sleep in a bed. Where we can eat real food. Where your father's waiting for you. Home."

"What are we at home, Katniss?" Peeta's voice sounded flat, dead, completely and utterly hopeless. The sound of it robbed her of her breath; it was very rarely that Peeta used her real name, and she had never heard him say it so devoid of emotion before.

"Wh- What do you mean?" she stammered dumbly.

"When we go home, what are we?" Peeta asked in that same dead and hopeless voice, now turning to face her. His eyes seemed as dead as his voice, and yet at the same time they were desperate and pleading. "Do we go back to barely knowing each other? Are we still friends? Or more? Or less? Whatever it is we are now?" Peeta huffed out a small laugh, but there was no humor or happiness in it. "Are you even going to tell people you fought in the war? Am I going to have to pretend you're a stranger again? Pretend we aren't the reason each other is alive? Pretend we didn't keep each other sane? Pretend we never shared a bed? What happens to us when we go home?"

Peeta's words only confirmed what Katniss had already feared: This was all her fault. She had spent years alternately clinging to Peeta when she needed him and pushing him away when she was afraid of becoming too close. She had let him comfort her when she was afraid, let him hold her together when she was broken, but had never given him reason to believe that she thought of him as anything more than convenient. In truth she had been trying to convince herself that that was all he was to her, only beginning in the last few days to admit to herself how wrong she was.

She had once thought that Peeta would have to be drugged before he would ask anything from her, and it seemed she was right. Now was the time when she would finally have to decide what she wanted, to tell Peeta exactly how much she was willing to give of herself. But in the moment, her guilt and her fear and her worry and her own insecurities and her shock at Peeta's hopelessness left her unable to form a response. She opened her mouth several times trying to reply, only to close it again when nothing came out. She knew she had to respond somehow, she owed it to Peeta to explain how she was feeling, but she was completely unable to do so.

As usual, Peeta tried to come to her rescue, filling the silence that had grown between them. "Forget it," he said with a sad shake of his head, turning back to stare at the wall once again. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that. You don't owe me an explanation. I shouldn't have said that. Must be the morphine talking. Just forget I said anything."

No, no, no, no, no, no, no! This was spiraling into disaster, and it was still all her fault. Stupid Katniss and her stupid inability to express herself! Why couldn't she just spit out some words? Why couldn't she tell Peeta what she was thinking? Why couldn't she be more sure of what she was feeling? Why couldn't she be just a little bit more like Peeta right now?

If she was going to get through this without hurting Peeta even worse than she already had, she was going to need his help.

"What do you want, Peeta?" she asked, hoping he was still drugged enough to answer.

"Huh?" She realized that she had no idea how long she'd sat silently having a mini panic attack over her whatever she had with Peeta.

"When we go home," she explained. "What do you want to happen?"

Peeta finally turned back to her. "You know what I want," he said, some emotion finally entering his voice.

"Tell me," she pleaded.

Peeta heaved another heavy sigh, but his eyes never left hers. "I love you, Katniss. I know that makes you uncomfortable and I know you don't feel the same way, but I do. That'll never change. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. I want to marry you, I want you to be my wife and I want me to be your husband. I want to go to sleep next to you every night and wake up next to you every morning. I want to be there waiting for you every day when you come back from hunting, I'll be covered in flour and you'll be spattered with blood but neither of us will care because we've both seen each other in far worse condition, and the few hours' separation was more than we could bear and we're finally together again. I want to raise a family with you, and spoil our children rotten; teach them how to hunt and how to bake and how to paint and how to sing like a songbird. I want to watch our children raise our grandchildren and know that we did right by our family, that we never abandoned them and we never beat them and we always loved them. I want to grow old with you, and the aches and pains of age won't hurt us because we'll have each other. I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you."

Once again, Katniss was rendered completely speechless by the power of Peeta's words. He had at least answered several of her questions for her. His feelings hadn't changed; he still loved her, he still wanted her. And she knew she wanted him, too. All that remained to be seen was whether she could screw up the courage to tell him that.

Peeta was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for some kind of response. She felt like her throat was closed and her tongue was frozen and speech would be impossible, but after a few moments she was able to croak out a word. "Okay."

"What?" Peeta looked completely shocked.

Having broken the logjam, Katniss found her mouth was operable once again. "Okay. Let's do that."

"…Katniss?" Peeta asked, still not believing what he was hearing from her. Katniss swallowed. Now that she felt capable of speech, all she needed was to figure out what to say. She tried to swallow her nerves and explain herself as best as she was able.

"Peeta, I'm not good at… this," she stammered out. "Any of this! I'm not good at… saying something. I'm not good at explaining my feelings. I can barely understand my feelings half the time! I'm not like you, always so confident and so sure of yourself and making beautiful speeches at the drop of a hat. I can't do that. I'm not like that." She lifted their clasped hands from where the lay on the bed, holding them up between them. "But I can tell you this much. I'm here, right now, with you. We're here together, we have been for a lot longer than I've been willing to admit, and I don't ever want that to change. And I'm sorry it took us both almost dying before I could admit that to myself, but I swear I know it now. I want to spend my life with you, too."

Peeta just stared at her, his expression was a complex battle of conflicting emotions but surprise seemed to be the most prevalent. He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated for a long moment before actually saying anything. He gave Katniss just enough time to have another mini panic. She was afraid that he was going to ask her if she loved him back, and she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to answer, because despite everything she had just said she still didn't feel comfortable talking about how she felt, and she was afraid that her inability to respond would ruin whatever it was that she was clinging to between her and Peeta.

Then Peeta finally spoke. "Katniss will you marry me?"

He knew her so well. She should have known him better. One of the defining truisms about their relationship was that he knew how to handle her – he knew when he could push her and when he needed to resist, he knew how to help her even when the last thing she ever wanted was to accept help, he knew when she needed to be left alone and when she needed to be embraced almost against her will. And, above all, he knew that she was a person who spoke far more easily with her actions than with her words. So he didn't ask her for words, he asked her for action. He didn't ask her to explain how she felt, he asked her to do something to show it.

Her smile was wide and genuine as she told him, "Yes."

Peeta smiled back at her. "That's all you have to say."

Katniss shook her head, but she couldn't wipe the smile from her face. "I don't know why you put up with me," she said honestly.

Peeta answered as if he was stating the obvious. "Because I love you."

And somehow, in that moment, for once in her life, her jumbled thoughts aligned themselves and her words flowed as easily as water in the creek. "I love you too, Peeta."

…..

The next morning, the nurses woke them both for breakfast. Between the two of them, they convinced the nurses to lay off on Peeta's morphine, to at least leave him coherent.

They ate in silence for a while. Katniss found it odd how quiet Peeta was being; she wondered if he was worried about her changing her mind. "Peeta, are you all right?" she asked.

In a rare display of nerves, Peeta stumbled over his words. "Um, Kat, can I, um, can I ask you something?"

Katniss wasn't sure what could be making him so nervous, but whatever it was it worried her. It certainly couldn't be anything good. "Of course. What's going on?"

"This is kind of embarrassing…" Peeta let out a nervous laugh. "I, um, I kind of… don't really remember what happened yesterday."

Katniss felt like all the blood drained from her body. "What?"

Peeta spoke quickly, trying to explain. "It's just, everything is such a blur… I'm not sure what was real and what wasn't, what actually happened and what was just in my head." He looked up at her. "We talked last night, right?"

"Yeah," was all she said.

The answer seemed to relieve Peeta a bit. "Good. I'm glad I didn't imagine the whole thing." Katniss wasn't sure what look crossed her face, but it made Peeta look away and run a hand through his hair. "I have these memories, or at least parts of memories… At least I think they're memories, some of them might be from dreams… But they're all, sort of, fuzzy around the edges."

Katniss thought back to the previous night: Peeta lethargic, half asleep, doped with morphine. She had even recognized that it was the wrong time to have a serious conversation with him. _She wasn't likely to get any of her answers while the morphine left him so confused that he wasn't sure if she was really in the room with him or not._ God, she was so stupid, she had let herself get carried away and forgot all of her reservations about Peeta's mental state.

But then, she realized, it shouldn't matter. She had sorted her thoughts and feelings out, she had decided what she wanted, whether Peeta remembered her telling him or not. She somewhat surprised herself when she realized that she had no reservations about what she had said yesterday, she had no regrets or second thoughts. Everything she had told Peeta last night was equally true this morning, and if she had to tell him again, then she'd just tell him again.

So when Peeta lamented, "I just can't tell which memories are real and which aren't," Katniss replied calmly.

"Then you should ask, Peeta."

Peeta looked at her for a moment, searching her face for something. Finally, he said, "We broke the lines at Petersburg, real or not real?"

"Real."

He nodded. She could almost see his mind working, filing this fact away. "We took Richmond, real or not real?"

"The army took Richmond, real. Not us personally," she clarified.

"Right," Peeta said. "Lee surrendered and the war's over, real or not real?"

"Lee surrendered, that's real. Joe Johnston is still fighting and Jeff Davis is still hiding somewhere, so the war isn't totally over yet."

Peeta seemed to digest this for a moment. "I lost my leg," he said, and raised his leg off the bed for a moment so that the bedsheet obviously draped over the stump where his leg now ended. "I guess that one was real."

"Yeah."

He dropped his leg, and hesitated for just a moment before he asked, "My mother showed up on the battlefield dressed as a Confederate general and took out half the company with a wooden spoon, real or not real?"

Katniss smiled despite herself. "Not real."

Peeta grinned back at her. "Yeah, I had a feeling that one was a dream."

He looked at her then, and somehow she knew what he was going to ask next. He glanced at the door before he whispered his question, still mindful of the nurses in the next room and the act she had to maintain until she was safely out of the army. It was a question that had struck her with terror just the previous night, but now she felt almost unnaturally calm, because now she knew for sure what her answer was.

It was an answer she could never have given before the war, when survival for herself and her family had consumed her completely, leaving no room for any other considerations. It was a question she could never have answered during the war, when the constant presence of death and the desperate need to just make it through to tomorrow had left her completely unable to process what she was feeling or why.

But now, after, when he whispered, "You love me, real or not real?"

She told him, "Real."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw. I love it when an Everlark comes together. :)
> 
> Originally, this chapter ended with the "I love you, too." It was while I was struggling with Chapter 5 that the idea to include Real or Not Real here occurred to me. I still think it might be a bit over the top and indulgent, but it might also be my favorite bit of this story.
> 
> Next chapter: Homecoming!


	7. Chapter 7

_May 23, 1865_

On this day in Washington, D.C., the victorious Union army was parading down Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of President Johnson, General Grant, hordes of officials and dignitaries, and hundreds of thousands of joyful, thankful Americans of no particular distinction. General Haymitch Abernathy, in his tailored uniform with his polished service medals, looked better than he had on any previous day of his wartime service. He was hardly alone in that, it could easily be said of many other soldiers who had served in the field. His thoughts that day weren't on his fine clothing, or on the beautiful weather, or on the cheering crowds. Today, his thoughts centered on all the fine young men – and women, or at least woman – who deserved to experience this proud day but were no longer there to do so. And he was far from alone in that as well.

Sergeant Thresh Seeder was experiencing one of the proudest moments of his life, second only to the first time he put on his blue uniform. He couldn't wait to go home – to his new home, a hundred miles away from the nearest plantation, a small mining town in Pennsylvania where he met good people who treated him like a human being for the first time in his life – and tell Rue all about it.

Sergeant Gale Hawthorne was mulling over the job offer he'd been given the night before. It was a real chance to do something other than mine coal. A way out, not just for him but for his whole family. And with time and distance and his own wishful thinking clouding his memory of the last time he saw her, he even thought he might talk Catnip into coming with him. He didn't think twice about leaving Panem behind, the only thing he cared about there outside of his family was Katniss. If she came with him then he would be leaving nothing behind. And if she didn't, then he knew what the reason would be, and he had no interest in sticking around and having to see _that_ every day.

Colonel Edward Boggs tried not to let all of the pomp and revelry affect him. He was a professional soldier, he had been a soldier before this war and he'd still be a soldier once ninety percent of the people around him had been discharged. He'd fought in the last war, and odds were that he would fight in the next one. It was just his job, it was how he spent his working life, and it wasn't any reason for this kind of jubilation. But then he looked at the range of reactions on the faces of the men – boys, really – that he had lead into battle, and he allowed himself a small smile. They deserved this.

Private Rory Hawthorne was completely overwhelmed by the crowd out to watch them march – he was pretty sure that at any one time there were more spectators within his sight than the entire population of Panem. He had only enlisted about a year ago, and he was glad that he had gotten through his service without running into Gale. He knew Gale didn't want him taking the risk of serving, and Prim hadn't exactly been thrilled with the idea either. But after hearing reports of the fierce fighting being done by Grant's army in Virginia; and knowing that Gale, and Thresh, and even Katniss, were all in the thick of it; he couldn't just sit home anymore. He had to do his part. One thing was for sure, though: After being in battle and somehow surviving, no way was he letting anything else get in his way. He was proposing to Prim as soon as he got home.

Colonel Beetee Hughes didn't think he should even be marching in this parade. He hadn't served in the field, he hadn't ever fired a gun. He had spent the entire war working in the War Department, researching and designing new weapons to be used by the men he thought of as the real soldiers. His mind turned to the young man he had recently offered a job to. He had experience as a real soldier, so he would bring a perspective to the department that Beetee could not. And he seemed to have an extraordinary natural talent for putting himself in the mind of the enemy, of thinking how they would think and designing a weapon or trap accordingly. It was a talent honed by years of designing traps and snares for wild animals. Such a promising young man, that Gale Hawthorne. He would almost certainly design some impressive weapons in the years to come.

Corporal Blight Jenkins of the 32nd Maine found his thoughts turned, as they often did, to his former squadmate Joe Mason. He had been strangely intrigued by Mason, in a way that had made him uncomfortable until he guessed at Joe's true identity. He never said anything about it, wanting to earn her trust first. But then he ran out of time. Damn camp fever. He reflected again on the disappointment he felt when Joe Mason was exposed as Johanna Mason and sent home before he had the chance to truly get to know her. Then he stopped and chided himself, as he always did when his thoughts turned to that memory. What did he think was going to happen? That he was going to meet a secretly female soldier, earn her trust, share her secret, and that she would maintain her cover throughout the war while falling in love with him? The two of them would fight the war together and then get married and live happily ever after? What kind of dime-novel poppycock was that?

Also on this day, far from Washington, D.C., with no one to watch them because no one had been notified to expect them, two figures clad in Union blue made the trip from the Panem, Pennsylvania train depot into town. The taller of the two had cut his crutch down into a cane, and leaned on it heavily as he was still unsteady on his feet. The shorter of the two held his other arm steady with her good arm, the one that wasn't still in a sling. She let him lean on her as needed, dismissing his concerns about her own injury, still somewhat giddy with this new experience of being together.

Technically neither of them should have been there. The war was barely over, and discharges weren't set to begin until sometime in the fall. But General Abernathy had pulled some strings, and gotten them both honorable medical discharges. "If you really want out of the army all you have to do is lift your shirt, sweetheart!" Abernathy had told her with a drunken giggle, but he had made sure her discharge was as proper as any soldier's.

They got more than a few curious looks as they walked through town. She was still in her uniform but no longer pretending to be a boy, and neither of them were policing their looks or small gestures of affection anymore. For Peeta, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to finally be able to hold Katniss's hand, to wrap an arm across her back, to brush a stray wisp of hair out of her face. To finally do the million large and small things he had been aching to do for the past three years. The past ten years, really.

But he never would have imagined the effect their new relationship had on Katniss. It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed. She was never one to do things in half measures, after all. He had thought he had known Katniss, after so many years of watching her at home and then the past three years of living and serving together. He knew stubborn and determined Katniss. He knew angry and assertive Katniss. He even knew fiercely protective Katniss. But tender Katniss, affectionate Katniss, loving Katniss? She was a revelation.

But the attention they were receiving made her nervous, as attention always did. He could sense that she was starting to second-guess her actions, to pull herself back behind the emotional walls she used to protect herself from the world. So he stopped and turned to her, letting go of her hand to turn her face towards his.

"Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it."

Katniss smiled at him, and he smiled back. She stretched up on her toes to raise her lips to his, but as he leaned in she leaned back. She kept their lips just barely separated and waited for him to reopen his eyes. "Thanks, I'll keep it in mind," she told him, then darted in for a quick peck on the cheek before she stood back on the ground and took his hand again.

"Tease," he said with a laugh as they resumed their walk.

She wanted to go to her house first, because she was eager to see her sister and nearly as eager to avoid his mother. But the bakery was on the way from the train depot to her house anyway, so they headed there first. When they got there, they were both in for a shock: The bakery looked to be completely abandoned. The display cases were empty, the display windows were covered by sheets, and the doors were all chained shut. They stood staring at the empty building for several minutes, not really knowing how to process what they were seeing.

"I'm sure they're fine," Katniss said. "Mom or Prim would have mentioned something." Peeta nodded, trying to believe her.

"The bakery's closed," a voice interrupted them. They turned to see four women standing together near the shoemaker's shop next door, seemingly just returning from an afternoon stroll through the town. A short, plump woman with yellowish hair, who had spoken. A plainly-dressed woman with honey-blonde hair. A younger woman with her straight blonde hair pulled back into a braid. And probably the only black girl living in Panem.

Rue was the first to recognize them, as she was the only one to have seen them in uniform before. "Katniss!" she yelled out and broke into a full sprint to close the distance between them.

"Katniss? Oh my god, Katniss!" Prim was only a few steps behind her friend. Delly and Madge stood frozen in surprise for several moments before they began to follow at a more leisurely pace, laughing lightly at the girls' enthusiasm.

Katniss had just barely disentangled herself from Peeta when the two girls crashed into her, nearly sending them all falling to the ground. "Careful of the arm!" she pleaded as pain flared in the injured limb.

Prim began asking a million medical questions about her injury. Rue turned away to embrace Peeta, taking more care after accidentally hurting Katniss and seeing his cane.

"How are you, Rue?" Peeta asked softly as he returned her embrace. He was momentarily overwhelmed by the show of emotion from the younger girl.

"I'm just so glad you're both safe," she said. Peeta tightened his hold slightly before the two stepped apart.

Delly observed Rue hugging the other soldier with curiosity. She didn't know Rue's full story, she didn't think even Prim knew all of it, but they all knew that she wasn't comfortable with strangers, especially white men. As she and Madge approached the group in front of the shuttered bakery, in her mind Delly mulled over the pieces of the puzzle: A soldier Rue was familiar with. A white man she felt comfortable around. Someone who obviously knew Katniss Everdeen. Someone who had not only come to Panem, but had come straight to the bakery.

It was just as he and Rue were separating that Delly finally recognized who she was looking at. Her hands flew to her mouth and her sharp intake of breath attracted his attention. It had been four years since she had seen her closest friend. The unkempt bush of blond curls spilling out from under his forage cap, and the scraggly beard hiding half of his face, both looked like they hadn't been trimmed, or groomed for that matter, in many months. But more than anything else, he looked so _tired_ compared to the young man she knew. But when she choked out his name, the smile that split his features made him look much more recognizable. "Hey, Dell," he replied. And suddenly Delly was emulating the younger girls she had been chuckling at moments earlier, crashing herself into her friend with such force that she upset Peeta's precarious balance and left them both lying in the dirt.

Katniss scowled down at the two. "Maybe a little less enthusiasm, Delly?"

"I'm so sorry!" Delly exclaimed as she sat up and gave Peeta an apologetic look. "I was just so excited to see you!"

"It's all right, Delly," Peeta said as embarrassment colored his features. "I'm just still getting used to this new leg."

"New leg?" Delly looked down to the odd angle formed where Peeta's prosthetic had been knocked out of place by the fall. "Oh, no, Peeta!"

"It's all right, Delly," he repeated. "Like I said, I'm getting used to it."

Once Peeta had righted his leg, Katniss and Prim hauled him back to his feet. Despite having only one arm to work with, Katniss refused Madge and Delly's offers to help lift in her place. "Are you okay?" she asked when they were standing face to face one again.

Peeta reached out and held her by the shoulders, giving them what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "I'm fine," he assured her. "I've been through a lot worse than falling in the road."

Katniss rolled her eyes theatrically. "Fine, if you're going by that standard then don't bother me until they chop off another limb."

Peeta smiled at her mock irritation. "I'd rather they chop off a limb than chop one up and leave it attached," he replied, drawing a quick bark of laughter from his former comrade. They turned back to the rest of the group to find a range of distressed expressions, from the pain on Prim's face to the uneasiness on Rue's to the near horror on Delly's. Peeta and Katniss exchanged a look; they would have to try harder to remember where they were and who they were with. Only other soldiers would truly understand their black humor.

After an uneasy moment, Delly suggested they all retire inside. Madge was the only one to decline, saying her parents were expecting her at home. In truth she felt somewhat uncomfortable among what was clearly a close-knit group of friends. She had always liked Katniss, but the two rarely spoke outside of their trades. As much as Madge had grown fond of Rue during the years she had been staying with her family, the younger girl looked up to Katniss like a cross between a big sister and God. And Madge still remembered when they were all kids and Delly and Peeta used to tell people they were siblings. She felt like the only one there who wasn't family, and she didn't want to impose on the family reunion.

So Madge was surprised when Katniss pulled her into a surprisingly firm one-armed hug. "Thank you for taking care of them," Katniss breathed into her ear. "I knew I could count on you." Feeling dumbfounded at the depth of emotion in the voice of the normally taciturn woman, Madge could only nod in reply. She offered a friendly squeeze of Katniss's uninjured arm in lieu of the words that were failing her.

Madge's intention to return home reminded Rue that she had to leave as well; she was due back at the Undersees' for her afternoon chores as housekeeper. But Madge urged her to stay and spend the afternoon with her returning friends, assuring her that the house could get by without her for an evening. As Madge left to return to her family's farm, the rest of the group went to the shoemaker's next door. Peeta struggled a bit with the stairs leading to the apartment upstairs, but he insisted to anyone who asked that he was fine, and responded to Katniss's quiet inquiries that he would have to get used to stairs sometime anyway. Once they were all seated in the Cartwrights' living room, Peeta and Katniss were met with three very expectant looks. With another glance at each other for reassurance, they began telling their friends about their recent experiences.

They both decided it was best to start from the very beginning. This was the first time Delly had heard anything from Peeta in four years; he had never written home since he left Panem in '61, afraid of what strings his mother might try to pull if she knew where he was. Katniss had been sending her pay home throughout the war, but letters were more infrequent. She had struggled with what to say to Prim when her days were filled with death and destruction that Prim could never understand, not that Katniss would ever want her to. So Peeta began with his enlistment in '61, the debacle at Bull Run, the misery of those early encampments in Washington. Katniss joined in with her enlistment at the state capitol, being thrown together with Peeta, the horror of Antietam. They gave a brief, sanitized recounting of their service together.

Finally they described the wounds they had received at Petersburg and their subsequent medical discharges. Rue and Prim were disappointed that Katniss and Peeta's arrival didn't mean they could expect the rest of the army to be discharged soon, but Peeta and Katniss reassured them that the fighting was over, that Thresh and Rory were perfectly safe now (assuming they had survived the final push, they didn't say out loud) and would be home as soon as their enlistments ran out.

The group fell into a bit of an awkward silence after that. Delly's bubbly enthusiasm and Prim's boundless optimism didn't mix well with Katniss and Peeta's war weariness; and Rue had enough experiences with traumatic events to know that prodding Katniss or Peeta would do no good. They would tell what they wanted to tell, when they were ready to tell it, to the people they were comfortable telling it to.

Delly looked like she wanted to ask something but couldn't make herself speak, and finally Peeta spoke up before she could. Prim and Rue had told them briefly what had happened in Panem since Prim's last letter to Katniss, but Delly had been unusually quiet. "Delly, where are my parents?" Peeta finally asked.

Delly looked reluctant to answer. "I don't really know, Peeta. They just up and left town last year, and never told anyone where they were going."

"Your mother was so busy telling anyone within earshot how thrilled she was to be leaving, she must not have had time to slip their destination into the conversation," Prim chimed in, prompting a nod of agreement from Rue. Delly gave Peeta an apologetic look, as if it was her fault that his mother was so awful and his father always knuckled under to her demands. Peeta shook his head to wave off her apology.

After another moment of awkward silence, Delly finally asked the question that had been roiling inside her ever since she realized that Katniss and Peeta had been holding hands when they arrived. "So, um Peeta…" she began, then paused and coughed nervously. "Um, did you ever mention, to Katniss, uh… did you two speak? Much? About… things?"

Rue and Prim looked somewhat bewildered by Delly's halting inquiry; she was so personable and outgoing, they had never seen her stumble over a question like that. But Katniss, knowing what Delly was trying to refer to, could feel the corners of her mouth ticking up into a smile at her attempt to be sly. It was a good thing _she_ had never had to keep military secrets, Katniss thought. Without turning her head, her eyes looked over to Peeta, only to see her amused expression mirrored on his face. "You mean did he mention that he's been in love with me since he was five?" she asked, just to see everyone's reaction. She wasn't disappointed. "Yeah, that might have come up."

Delly looked like she was barely containing an excited squeal; she was even too excited to speak. Prim's jaw was hanging open; she more than anyone knew how hostile Katniss was to the idea of love, and hearing her speak of it so casually was shocking. Rue's smile was one of genuine happiness; she was just glad that Peeta had gotten the chance to tell Katniss all of the wonderful things he had told her on her last night at the Snow Estate.

Peeta's expression grew into a real smile. "I still never would have had the nerve on my own. Thank god for Caesar."

"Wish he could have been at the wedding," Katniss said with a sigh, thinking of her lost friend.

"Wedding?" three girls squealed. Seemingly as one, they all looked to Katniss and Peeta's hands, and finally took note of the matching silver bands that adorned them.

Katniss and Peeta wore matching smiles as they told of their unusual courtship. Peeta's smile made Delly think _Finally he looks like Peeta!_ and Katniss's smile made Prim think _Who would have thought her face could move like that?_ The newlyweds told their friends about their engagement while convalescing, about their four-person wedding, and about the preacher who may have been one of the oddest, yet nicest and most genuine individuals they had ever met.

Once they had been released from the field hospital outside of Petersburg, they had begun asking after a preacher or a justice to marry them. They couldn't risk revealing Katniss's true identity to an Army chaplain, and there were few in Virginia willing to deal with the occupying Union army. The few they found who were willing to talk to them, probably in hopes of currying favor with the conquering force, had all balked at the idea of marrying a woman soldier. Peeta and Katniss wound up continuing the search all the way back to Washington, where just a few days earlier they had finally found a preacher who would perform their ceremony.

He was the only man either of them had ever seen who wore eye makeup, a thin streak of gold that highlighted the flecks of gold in his green eyes, an affectation he said he picked up during his short career as a stage performer. At first glance his close-cropped brown hair and plain black clothing were what one would expect from a preacher, but upon closer inspection the cut and design of his clothes made them stand out. And he used no title or honorific; he wasn't Reverend Cinna or Father Cinna or even Honorable Cinna. Just Cinna.

After growing up with Reverend Cray, Katniss was distrustful of preachers in general. But somehow Cinna's calm demeanor and his collection of eccentricities served to put her at ease. He was the first person Peeta had ever seen earn Katniss's trust so quickly. Her instincts were proven correct when he made no issue with Katniss marrying in her army uniform, and he had actually been the one to suggest altering the vows for Katniss before she even thought to request it herself. No matter how out-of-character this whole "love" thing was making her act, her days of swearing to obey anyone were over as soon as her discharge went through. General Abernathy had accompanied them to the capitol city, having to submit reports and sign paperwork related to a number of commendations and discharges, including their own medical discharges. He served as their witness and the only guest at their ceremony, and offered the newlyweds a surprise gift of a pair of silver rings he had obtained from a jeweler in the city.

"I don't know whether to hate you for having such a dumpy wedding, or to hate you because I wasn't at your dumpy wedding," Delly said once they were finished.

"I say both," Prim said with a pout. Rue just smiled at the couple.

"We really didn't want a big to-do," Peeta explained. "And we wanted to get it done before we came home."

"You've been swooning over her since we were five and you didn't want a big to-do?" Delly asked, unbelieving.

"I didn't spend those years dreaming of our lavish wedding party," Peeta said. "I dreamed of spending our lives together as husband and wife." Prim actually sighed at that sentiment, her pique at missing the ceremony seemingly forgotten.

Delly turned to Katniss then. "So what happened to you? I have this vision in my head where he confesses his love for you and you fall into his arms and it's just too romantic for words, but I just can't imagine Katniss Everdeen being part of that scene. How long did you torture him?"

Katniss just shook her head. Was she this transparent to everyone? "The whole three years," she answered. "It wasn't until we were both bleeding to death outside Petersburg that I finally realized."

"Realized that you loved him?" Prim prompted.

"Realized that I couldn't live without him," Katniss said.

The conversation stalled again after that. There weren't any more wedding details for Delly and Prim to swoon over, and it didn't take long to figure out that they weren't going to get any more details about their time in the army beyond what had already been shared.

"How's Mom?" Katniss asked at length.

"She's good," Prim hedged. She was always trying to put the best spin on their mother's condition, but the girl didn't have a dishonest bone in her body, and Katniss always saw through it.

"Prim..." Katniss admonished. She and Prim were as close as any siblings could be, they had to be to survive the circumstances surrounding their father's death. Their mother was about the only topic they ever argued about, but when they did Prim showed that she could be just as stubborn as her sister.

"Really, she's good," Prim insisted. "We go out and treat patients, and we go out and collect herbs, and she's fine."

"Is she any better than when I left?" Katniss asked.

Prim hesitated for a moment before answering. "She isn't any worse," she finally said. Katniss huffed in annoyance, but didn't push the subject any further.

They were quiet for another moment, until Delly suddenly jumped out of her chair. "Oh, Peeta, I have something for you! Wait here!" She disappeared into another room, and was gone for several minutes. Peeta and Katniss gave questioning looks to Prim and Rue, but nobody knew what Delly was referring to or what she had gone to get.

Finally Delly reappeared, carrying a fat envelope that she handed over to Peeta. "Your father left this for you before they left," she explained.

Peeta shook off the trepidation he felt at Delly's explanation and emptied the contents of the envelope onto the table in front of him. There were many pages of letters and documents, and a set of keys. Katniss tried to be patient, but her curiosity was eating her as Peeta carefully went through everything. He seemed to read through everything several times, his eyes tearing up at times. Seeing this, Katniss reached over to rest her hand on his back. It was a poor attempt at a reassuring gesture, she thought, but it seemed to work, as Peeta looked up to flash her a smile before returning his attention to the papers in front of him.

Luckily for Katniss, Delly's curiosity ran out before hers did. "What is it, Peeta?" his friend asked.

Peeta's voice was small and unsure. "My father, um, he gave me the bakery."

Katniss wasn't quite sure what she was hearing. "What do you mean?"

"He and my mother moved to Philadelphia to be closer to my brothers." Katniss and Delly both knew that Barlee had moved to Philadelphia when he turned eighteen and was working there in business, and Rye had just begun studying law in the city before the war started. "My mother was so eager to leave that she didn't pay much attention to what he was doing with the bakery. She would never have allowed it, but he signed the deed over to me without her knowing. The business, the building, the land it's on, everything. It's all ours." He stopped shuffling through the pages to read part of the letter his father had written him. "'You were always the only one of my boys to truly take an interest in baking. I hope you'll build a good life for yourself now that your mother is out of your way.'" He looked up to face Katniss. "I guess we don't have to worry about where we're staying."

Katniss smiled despite herself. She knew that Peeta loved baking, that he loved everything about the bakery except for dealing with his mother. His father hadn't protected him from his mother's abuse when he was growing up, but at least he had helped remove her from his life now. But she also knew how Peeta would be feeling, that he wouldn't see it the way she did. "I know you feel like they left you behind, but honestly I'm just glad that witch is out of your life."

Delly's mouth dropped open. "Did he tell you about his mother?" She clamped her hand over her mouth when she realized what she had just said, looking nervously over to Rue and Prim. She knew that Peeta had always tried to keep his abuse a secret, in fact she had thought she was the only non-Mellark who knew about it. Hearing Katniss mention it so casually had shocked her, so much so that she had inadvertently blurted out her question without thinking about the presence of Prim and Rue.

"Um, I already knew. I, uh, saw it once, when we were kids," Katniss explained haltingly. She didn't want to go into the whole bread story. "Rue knows too," she added quickly, only adding to Delly's surprise.

"The bruises were always kind of obvious," Prim chimed in. "I didn't realize it was supposed to be a secret."

"I tried to hide it," Peeta said weakly.

"Well, if she had tried to hurt you after we got back I probably would have shot her, so it's just as well that she's in Philadelphia," Katniss said fiercely.

Despite the heavy subject, Delly smiled to herself. She knew how long Peeta had been hung up on Katniss, and when she saw how protective Katniss was towards him, Delly knew that Katniss truly returned his feelings. She couldn't have been happier for her friend.

"So," Katniss said in an attempt to life the mood, "should we go check out your new bakery?"

"Our bakery," Peeta corrected her.

Katniss rolled her eyes, but she smiled as well. "Whatever. Let's go see what your mother left us. Then later I guess we should go see mine."

…..

As it turned out, they had been left quite a bit. The bakery had dust on every surface, after being left empty for a year, but was clean otherwise. They found cooking implements waiting for them on the shelves - bowls, utensils, trays, baking pans, cookie sheets, etc. Peeta stopped and stared when he saw one of the rolling pins on a worktable. He didn't know how long he stood frozen before he felt Katniss pry his hand from his side and weave their fingers together. He turned and saw the concern in her eyes, but she gave him a tentative smile that prompted his own. She tugged him over toward the stairs to the second floor, but first he took the pin and threw it into the firebox under the ovens. "We're not using that one," he said shakily. Katniss stayed silent, but she gripped his hand a little tighter.

Upstairs, things were similarly untouched. All of the family's belongings were gone, but a bit of furniture remained. They wouldn't be spending the night on the floor, at least. In a storage room on the third floor, they found a box containing some of Peeta's old clothes, along with a collection of handwritten cookbooks and other family mementos that brought renewed tears to Peeta's eyes.

"This is basically our family," Peeta said. They were kneeling on the floor, side by side next to the open box. Katniss was once again rubbing her new husband's back in her best attempt at being supportive, while he went through what had been left behind for him. The sense of abandonment that he'd been feeling ever since Delly told him of his parents' move - that he'd been feeling for most of his life, if he was being honest - was overwhelming him now as he sorted through the box of family heirlooms. "The old Mellark recipe books. Things that Pieter Mellark brought across the ocean to New Amsterdam more than two hundred years ago. They left it all behind." Peeta had always been made to feel that he was superfluous, that he was unneeded, that he was a mistake. But now he had literally been left behind with the trash.

But Katniss saw things differently. "No, Peeta. They didn't just leave this behind. Your dad left this all for _you_."

The idea startled Peeta. He straightened up and blinked several times to try to clear his eyes. "You really think so?"

"Absolutely. It all goes together, doesn't it? The bakery, the recipes, the heirlooms. This is your family's history. You just said it's been passed down from Mellark to Mellark for two hundred years. Now your father's passed it on to you."

Katniss's theory did make a certain amount of sense to Peeta. His father had mentioned in his letter how Peeta was the only Mellark interested in taking over the family baking trade. Rye and Barlee had spent their lives seeking their mother's approval, bowing to her will. But young Peeta had always listened with rapt attention whenever his father had told stories of the Mellark baking tradition, of Pieter Mellark's journey to the New World, of Balthazar Mellark's service in the American Revolution and subsequent settlement in the western frontier region that would go on to become Pennsylvania coal country. Peeta had figured out at a young age that he would never live up to his mother's expectations no matter how hard he tried, and one night in the rain under an apple tree he had gained the wisdom to recognize that he didn't want to anyway. He wanted to be part of those stories his father told him. He wanted to be the next Mellark baker.

His father had given him the bakery. He had removed the chief obstacle that stood in Peeta's way. And now, he had literally handed the family history over to him.

It was at certainly a nicer thought than being left behind with the trash.

"Still would have been nice to hear him actually say it," Peeta said out loud.

"Yeah, well, we don't always get the sendoffs from our parents that we want to," Katniss said. Peeta turned his attention to her, inwardly chastising himself for reminding her of her painful past, but before he could speak Katniss reached out and gently wiped the tears from the corner of his eye, running her fingertips down the side of his face and across his jaw before dropping her hand and taking his once again. "When you think about it, your father left you the same thing my father left me: a skill to inherit and a way to support your family."

As comforting as Katniss's touch was to him, the word she used tasted like ashes when he thought of his brothers and his mother decamped to Philadelphia without giving him a second thought, and even his father only pausing long enough to leave him a box of stuff. "Family?" he said bitterly. "What family?"

"Our family," Katniss said without hesitation. Her plain statement shocked Peeta out of the spiral of self pity he had allowed himself to fall into. He had been so focused on what he'd lost, he had forgotten what he'd gained.

He lifted the hand of the girl he'd loved since he was a small child, and stared at the wedding ring he'd slipped onto her finger earlier in the week. "Our family," he repeated, lifting his eyes to meet the gaze of his wife, and returning the smile she gave him. "Real or not real?"

Without either of them consciously thinking about it, after that morning in the field hospital outside of Petersburg the question had become part of their routine. Sometimes he still felt like everything was happening in a dream. Sometimes too many life-changing events came too close together. Sometimes the boy who had grown up being told how worthless he was for seventeen years needed reassurance from the girl of his dreams, his closest wartime comrade, the one person he loved and trusted more than anyone. When he did, he would ask. And every time he did, Katniss gave him the same answer.

"Real."

Before doing anything else that afternoon, they unboxed their family heirlooms and placed them around their house.

…..

Katniss's reunion with her mother was a bit awkward and a bit strained. Which made it no different than any other interaction they'd had in the previous ten years. Mrs. Everdeen was relieved to see her daughter home safe, but was still trying to adjust to the revelation of her new son-in-law. It was probably for the best that Prim couldn't contain herself and had spilled everything long before Katniss and Peeta arrived that evening, so that they didn't see her initial reaction.

Peeta had taken the opportunity to change out of his uniform at the bakery, and Katniss did so now. She slowly released a deep breath as she looked at herself in her family's old, cracked mirror, and she could feel three years of tension beginning to leave her body. Katniss wondered briefly if Peeta would say anything about his wife wearing men's trousers now that she wasn't trying to disguise herself, but when she emerged from the bedroom he smiled the widest smile she'd seen on him since their wedding. He quickly closed the distance between them and pulled her into a hug, his embrace seeping the worry and fear out of her like it always did.

"We're really home," he breathed against her hair. She knew exactly what he meant. She understood now why his whole demeanor seemed to have changed when he dressed at the bakery before they came here. Despite being back in Panem, despite being surrounded by all the familiar sights, despite seeing their friends and her sister, there was something different about doffing the uniform and dressing like she used to before the war. It made everything seem so much more...

"Real," she replied.

Watching the exchange silently, Mrs. Everdeen started to see that she didn't need to worry about her daughter's sudden marriage.

The rest of Katniss's old clothes were packed up to bring back to the bakery. Prim and Mrs. Everdeen insisted on examining Katniss's arm wound themselves. They frowned at the rushed, sloppy stitches, but they both agreed it was too late to do anything about it now. The arm would bear a nasty scar once it healed. Katniss didn't care. She felt like she was covered in scars, inside and out. Neither of the Everdeen healers had bothered to comment on the Gettysburg scar on her forehead, and they hadn't even seen the burns on the outside of her thigh. What was one more scar in the scheme of things?

The four shared an evening meal. Mrs. Everdeen was eager to learn how her daughter had wound up married, but as always was reluctant to disrupt the fragile peace between them by asking intrusive questions. Katniss was similarly reluctant to go through everything again after a tiring afternoon. Luckily, as always, Prim acted as go-between, filling their mother in on details Katniss wasn't in the mood to repeat and prompting Katniss with questions of her own. Peeta helped Prim carry the conversation, seemingly far more willing to relive parts of the war than Katniss was. To Mrs. Everdeen, Peeta's presence took some getting used to. He just looked so much like his father.

As the meal was drawing to a close, Peeta spoke up. "Katniss, could we do something?" he asked.

"What is it?"

He cut a thick piece off of the loaf of bread Mrs. Everdeen had served with dinner and began playing with it in his hands. "The Mellarks have been bakers forever, going all the way back to Holland. And there's this thing we do, when a Mellark is married. We have our own little ceremony, where the couple toasts bread together, and shares it. Maybe it's silly, but a Mellark isn't really married until after the toasting."

"Why didn't you say anything before?" Katniss asked.

"I wanted to wait until we were home. I didn't want to do it in the capitol, or in camp somewhere, or dressed up in our uniforms. It just wouldn't feel right," Peeta said. "A toasting should be done at home, and it should be done with family." Each looking into the other's eyes, they both knew what was being left unsaid: That he had hoped his family would be there, or at least his father. That this collection of Everdeens was the only actual family he had left. "Besides, Prim was so disappointed to have missed the wedding, I can't make my new sister that mad at me on my first day," he added in an attempt to lighten the mood. Prim smiled; Katniss didn't. But after a moment she stood from her place at the table and held her hand out for her husband. "Let's toast some bread, Peeta."

It wasn't much of a ceremony, really. The fire in the hearth had gone out after Mrs. Everdeen had finished preparing the meal, so the couple kindled one together. They knelt in front of the fire and held the bread out to the flame, each with one hand on the thick slice, manipulating the bread to expose all of it to the flames without burning their hands. Once it was brown and crusted over, they took turns feeding bits of it to each other. At times they smiled and quietly laughed at each other, as the whole thing felt a bit silly. At times they each had tears in their eyes, because the simple gesture of feeding each other felt so much more intimate than even their wedding had. At the least it lacked the background noise of Haymitch's sarcastic commentary.

Prim cried throughout the event, and even Mrs. Everdeen was moved by the gesture. Whatever doubts she harbored about her daughter's abrupt marriage were rapidly dissipating; as they stared into each other's eyes and fed each other bits of toast, the love each one felt for the other was practically tangible. When the bread was gone and the new couple stood, after Prim finally released her grip on her new brother, Mrs. Everdeen pulled him into a warm embrace, the first genuine affection she had shown for the man she was finally beginning to think of as her son-in-law. "Welcome to the family," she told him.

…..

"So."

"So."

They stood on opposite sides of the bed, each wearing a long nightshirt. Each undeniably nervous. Because this was the night. As much as they had been through together, as much as they had been sharing their lives for three years, as often as they had shared a bed, as much as they had already been married for almost a week, in one very important way tonight was their first night together.

They had spent their first few nights as husband and wife in an army camp in Washington. They had spent the previous night as guests at the home of Annie Odair; when their trip home included several hours of waiting in between trains in Philadelphia, they had decided to visit Finnick's widow, and their two boys Finn and Nick. They wound up being there far longer than they had planned and eventually stayed the night, catching the following day's train into Panem. Neither the army camp nor Annie Odair's guest bedroom had seemed like proper places to consummate their marriage.

Now, here they were. Their home. Their bedroom Their bed. Tonight was their first night together.

Peeta knew very little of sex, beyond the obvious. Only what he had heard from his brothers, bragging of their "conquests" of various girls. What they described was a dirty, nasty thing, deservedly banned from polite conversation. He couldn't see some of the things they described transpiring between two people who loved each other. He couldn't imagine treating Katniss the way they had treated the girls in their stories, and he couldn't imagine anyone who did surviving the attempt. It would have been nice to talk to his father about this, he thought. But that wasn't an option. He was going to have to figure this one out on his own.

What Katniss knew of sex came mainly through patients who showed up at the Everdeen house after a night of servicing some man's passion. The saddest cases were the women coming from Reverend Cray's. But in their own way, the women who showed up after a night with their husbands were even worse. She knew Peeta would never treat anyone the way those women's husbands had treated them, but she never saw the women who were with good men, only ones who needed medical attention in the morning. It's not like she had close girlfriends she could talk to; her only real friend was Gale. Her mother, being a healer, would have been a good source of information, if they had any kind of real relationship beyond being polite to each other for Prim's sake. She was going to have to figure this one out on her own.

Peeta, being a man of words, was trying to figure out how to say to Katniss everything that he was feeling. That he loved her, but he also wanted her. Badly. That he was afraid he might hurt her. That she was the most beautiful women he had ever seen, but of course he loved her for more than just her beauty, but god she was so incredibly beautiful. That he ached to see her, to touch her, to be with her. That he was completely fine with doing nothing for a while longer if that's what she wanted. That he loved her. That he wanted her. That he loved her.

Katniss, being a woman of action, took control of the situation when she whipped her nightgown over her head and dropped it to the floor, leaving herself bare before her husband for the first time.

Peeta, the man of words, made only a weak choking sound. His jaw hung open as his eyes drank in the glorious sight of his naked wife.

Katniss, the woman of action, cocked her eyebrow expectantly at her still-clothed husband.

It was a night for actions.

…..

"I could definitely get used to this."

"Beats the hell out of a tent in the mud, huh?"

"I don't know. Mud could be fun."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is in the home stretch. There will be one or two more chapters exploring their post-war lives, then an epilogue. Coming up in the next chapter: There's a very important character who hasn't come home yet.


	8. Chapter 8

_July 22, 1865_

Gale Hawthorne walked through the streets of Panem, Pennsylvania for the first time in three years. It was amazing to him how little had changed in that time. Some of the shops were a little more run down, and the streets were emptier than he remembered, with so many still away in the army. But for the most part very little had changed in the last three years. Gale, on the other hand, felt like an entirely different person.

His visit to Panem only reinforced that fact. His six-year-old baby sister was suddenly a nine-year-old young woman who only vaguely remembered him. His twelve-year-old kid brother was now old enough to work at the mine, though thankfully still not old enough to be sent underground. And his fourteen-year-old brother was gone, now a seventeen-year-old army private not due for discharge until the fall. Gale had needed to spend some time out in the woods taking his anger out on the trees before he felt calm enough to return home and discuss that. After everything Gale had done for his family, everything he'd done to preserve their lives in the wake of his father's death, Rory seemed determined to throw his away with both hands. Rory enlisting was almost more of a betrayal than Katniss. But then Katniss had deeper betrayals yet to be revealed.

When she hadn't been at her mother's house, and Prim had told him that he'd find her at the bakery, he thought that maybe he should just leave. Pack up his family and go back to his new life in the nation's capitol, and just write Katniss a letter. Deep down, he knew what it meant if she was spending her days with the baker's son. But some part of him had to see for himself. Some part of him just couldn't believe it until he saw it. Some part of him still thought that in the end it would be him and his Catnip, just like it was always supposed to be.

As he entered the bakery, he was struck again by how little had changed. The same bell over the door announced his presence. The same cookies and cakes sat in the display windows. The same loaves sat in the racks. Everything was the same.

Except the proprietor. "Just one moment!" called a voice from the kitchen that was not the baker Gale had grown up with.

It was about a half a minute before he came hobbling out. He was using a cane, and he clearly favored one leg. His eyebrows shot up in surprise when he saw who was waiting at the counter. "Hey, man," Peeta said as he extended his hand to shake. Gale hesitated for just a moment before taking it. "Welcome home."

Gale grimaced at the greeting, but he didn't want to get into all of that with Peeta. Instead he just said, "Thanks," and moved on to his reason for being there. "Prim said Katniss would be here."

If Peeta took any offense at Gale's brusque manner, he gave no sign of it. "She's out hunting. She's usually back by lunch."

Gale tried to be casual as he asked, "Does she have lunch here often?"

Peeta's brows knit together as he answered. "Um, yeah. Most days. How much did Prim tell you about Katniss?"

"Not much," Gale admitted. Prim had been frustratingly tight-lipped, in fact, only telling him where he could find Katniss and stating that anything more than that he would have to find out from Katniss directly. But he didn't want to talk about any of that with Peeta, either. "Look man…" Gale began, but then trailed off. He didn't have anything to say to Peeta, and he wasn't really interested in anything Peeta might have to say to him. "I just need to talk to Katniss."

Peeta's face was neutral as he replied. "Well, like I said-"

He was cut off by the sound of the back door slamming open. Peeta whipped his head around towards the source of the noise. "Sounds like that's her," he said as he began making his way back. He didn't even turn around as he spoke. "I'll let her know you're here," he got out before disappearing into the back room.

Gale couldn't help but feel insulted by Peeta's abrupt brush-off, but in the end it didn't matter. He was finally going to talk to Katniss; that's all that mattered.

…..

Peeta was taking a tray of cheese buns out of the oven when he heard the bell announce a customer.

Katniss's arm may have finally healed enough that Prim gave the okay for her to hunt again, but it still ached when she overextended herself. Which she did every time she went out hunting, of course. He liked to have something special waiting for her when she came home, if for no other reason then because it would at least get her to sit down and rest for a minute while she ate. After experimenting with different pastries over the last couple of months, he had learned that the cheese buns were her favorite.

Starting the bakery up again had been a lot of hard work, but overall the process had gone smoothly. During the war Peeta had saved a large portion of his pay, since he wasn't supporting a family back home like Katniss was. He had more than enough saved to pay their startup costs. Reconnecting with his father's old suppliers went well; some were nervous about making deals with someone so young operating without the guidance and supervision of his father, while others were quite pleased not to have to deal with his mother anymore. In the end it was a wash.

"Just one moment!" he called over his shoulder as he placed the tray down on the counter directly next to the oven. While he was steadier on his feet after months of practice, he still didn't quite trust himself walking without his cane, which necessarily meant he couldn't carry trays anywhere. It was a bit of a hassle trying to bake and cover the front counter on his own when he needed his cane to walk and he couldn't carry anything too large for one hand, but he'd sooner cut off his other leg than ask Katniss to give up hunting to stay home and take care of him. He could manage well enough. Once more soldiers returned home and business picked up, he'd hire an assistant, and until then he could manage well enough.

He retrieved his cane from where he had leaned it against the counter and made his way to the front of the shop. The morning rush had been busy that day, and he was limping a bit more than normal. But he stopped altogether when he was who his customer was, before slowly continuing to the counter.

Gale Hawthorne looked good, better than he had when they had last met the previous January. Too good, really, for someone sleeping in the mud and living off of army rations. His fine suit looked out of place as well, especially on a soldier, especially on a coal miner from Panem. He was dressed like he was trying to impress some big-city elitist.

Peeta had a million questions, but he swallowed them all for the time being. "Hey man," he said as he extended his hand across the counter. Gale took his hand and shook. "Welcome home."

Gale spoke curtly, sparing no time for pleasantries. "Thanks. Prim said Katniss would be here."

Peeta tried not to take offense at Gale's tone. _He's just impatient to see Katniss_ , he told himself. _Wouldn't you be?_ "She's out hunting," he explained. "She's usually back by lunch."

Gale nodded as he took in this information, and his eyes began to scan the room. "Does she have lunch here often?"

The question took Peeta aback. "Um, yeah. Most days." He knew to come to the bakery looking for her, did he really not know she lived here now? "How much did Prim tell you about Katniss?"

"Not much." Gale returned his gaze to the man he was speaking to. "Look man…" Gale stopped, and shook his head slightly. "I just need to talk to Katniss."

It was clear to Peeta that whatever Gale wanted to talk to Katniss about, he had no interest in Peeta knowing about it. And as far as Peeta was concerned, that meant that it wasn't anything good for him. Still, he wasn't going to come between his wife and her oldest friend. He did his best to wipe his inner turmoil from his face. "Well, like I said-"

Before he could finish the sentence he heard the back door bang against the opposite wall with force. It sounded like Katniss had had a frustrating morning. Peeta left Gale behind as he told him, "Sounds like that's her. I'll let her know you're here."

He found Katniss in the back kitchen. There was an entire deer carcass just inside the door, and while she had obviously made some effort to clean her hands and face after gutting the deer, streaks and smears of blood still adorned her shirt, pants, neck, face, and hair. Her still-healing arm hung limply at her side, and her other hand clutched two cheese buns – well, one and three-quarters cheese buns.

Peeta smiled widely at her. "Hello, beautiful."

Katniss rolled her eyes as she took another bite of cheesebun. "You know I hate when you call me that."

"I know," Peeta said as he sat next to her and began gently rubbing some circulation back into her overtaxed arm. "But you kind of love it too."

Katniss couldn't help the soft smile that sprouted from Peeta's comment. It was one of Peeta's favorite smiles, the kind of open expression of happiness that she had rarely ever allowed him to see before they were married. "Yeah, I kind of do," she admitted shyly.

Peeta smiled to himself as he watched his wife settle back in her chair, relaxing into his touch and continuing to nibble away at her fistful of cheese bun, swatting at him playfully when he nipped a bit for himself. These were the moments he lived for, quiet moments when they could just relax and be happy together. It didn't hurt that Katniss clearly loved them as well. He didn't know if it was the lack of such times in their childhoods or their experience in the war, but they shared this appreciation for peace and contentment.

If the slamming door hadn't already told him what had happened that morning, the presence of an intact carcass would have confirmed it. The butcher, Mr. Rooba, had obviously refused to trade with her today. He was one of the Panem merchants who looked down their noses at mine workers and their families. Peeta had a lot of respect for Mrs. Rooba, she was tough as nails but ultimately a fair-minded woman, but her husband was an elitist snob. He had been a regular buyer of Katniss's game before the war, but now she had committed such unforgivable sins as marrying a merchant, living in town, claiming to have served in the war, and being friends with a black woman. Now Mr. Rooba would sometimes refuse to buy from her.

As with so many things, Peeta thought the situation would straighten itself out with time. Once more soldiers returned home and the demand for good meat went up, Mr. Rooba would no longer be in a position to turn away one of his best suppliers. And in the meantime, the meat would certainly not go to waste. Later this afternoon all of their friends would be receiving venison deliveries. Not just Prim and Mrs. Everdeen, but also the Hawthornes, and the Cartwrights; the Undersees if they would take any; even old Sae, the miner's widow Katniss had grown friendly with over the years. None of them would have any need to visit the butcher's for the next few days.

But all of that could wait for now. "You know I'm dying to ask you about your day," Peeta said, "but you have a friend out front looking for you. Catnip."

Katniss turned to look at him, her eyes wide. "Gale's really here?"

"Yeah," he told her. "And, I don't think he knows about… us."

"How do you mean?" Katniss asked. "He knew about us before I did."

Peeta chuckled, remembering Katniss's mortification when she had told him about that conversation with Gale. "Well, when I told him you'd be back for lunch, he asked how often you eat here. He said he talked to Prim, she told him to come here looking for you, but apparently she didn't say much more than that."

Katniss shook her head. "No, Prim wouldn't say anything. She'd leave it for me."

"Well, he's out front waiting for you," Peeta said as Katniss popped the last bite of cheese bun into her mouth.

She thought for just a moment. "I should probably get some of this blood off of me first."

"There's a bucket of water heating by the ovens for you," Peeta said.

Katniss's lips curled into a scowl, but she bit off her initial reaction before she gave it voice. She was trying to get better at letting Peeta do things for her. "Thank you," she said simply. She pressed a kiss against his lips before grabbing the bucket and heading upstairs.

…..

It had easily been ten minutes since Peeta had hobbled out of the storefront, and Gale was starting to get angry. What was taking so long? Had he even told Katniss that he was here yet? Was he going to tell her at all? Was he trying to keep her away from him?

When he couldn't just stand there staring at the door behind the counter anymore, he took to pacing, angrily striding back and forth across the shopfront. When he felt silly pacing, he stared out the front window at the shops across the street, fighting the urge to barge through that back door and demand-

"You're back."

He spun to find Katniss standing by the door to the back room; as usual, he hadn't heard her silent approach. She looked well, her skin was flushed and her hair shined. There were a million things he wanted to say to her, but only one of them managed to escape his throat. "You're here."

Katniss took a moment to process his statement, everything it said and everything it meant. "You were right," she said.

Gale let his shoulders sag. "I was hoping I wasn't," he replied.

They stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment. Katniss didn't know what to say. Gale knew nothing he said would do any good.

Finally, Katniss resorted to her usual tactics: She changed the subject. "I'm surprised to see you so soon. Mrs. March got a letter from Thom saying the 47th wouldn't be discharged till the winter."

Gale let out a deep breath. This wasn't how he imagined explaining this. "I'm not in the 47th anymore," Gale said.

"They put you in a new regiment six months before your discharge?" Katniss asked.

"I'm not being discharged."

The sentence detonated between them like a bomb. Katniss opened and closed her mouth several times before forming a sentence. "What do you mean?"

"I got this offer, a couple of months ago," Gale explained. "A colonel from the War Department named Beetee Hughes, he wants me to work with him in Washington." He began to grow more excited as he described his opportunity. He rounded the counter so he could stand face-to-face with her. "It's a way out, Catnip. A way out of the mines, a way out of Panem. A real chance to make something of myself."

"Leave Panem?" Katniss asked in surprise. She had just gotten her friend back, and he was leaving again? "But you just got back!"

"I'm only here to start making arrangements," Gale said. "I'm moving my whole family to the capitol with me."

Katniss shook her head, trying to deal with too many revelations at once. "Why does this guy want you in the War Department?"

"I guess he heard about some of the stuff we were doing in Petersburg," Gale said. "Me and some of the guys set up these traps to flush out Confederate patrols. Tripwires and wolfpits, that sort of thing. One of the things we did was we took artillery shells and rigged them with pressure caps, then we buried them so they'd explode when the Rebs walked over them. Colonel Boggs loved them. I guess he mentioned them in a report, it got passed to one of the guys in Weapons Development, and Beetee saw it and offered me a job."

It was several seconds before Katniss could form a response. "Weapons development? You're designing weapons? Snares and traps for human beings?"

"Yeah," Gale said, not noticing Katniss's sudden uneasiness. "I'm not doing the engineering part, obviously, though Beetee says he'll teach me that as we go. What I'll be doing is less about the mechanics of the traps than the psychology behind them. Putting myself in the mind of an enemy. Using people's natural impulses against them."

The idea revolted Katniss. "How could you do that?"

"Catnip?" Gale asked, confused by her reaction.

"You were in the war too!" she said, her voice rising. She took a step forward, anger and betrayal flashing in her steel-gray eyes. "After everything we saw, after all the people we watched die, how could you design weapons? How could you possibly let yourself play a role in even more death?"

"You think this'll be the last war we get into?" Gale asked. He couldn't help but take offence at the accusation in her tone. "Don't act like you're above killing people, not after you bragged about all the bloody battles you'd been in." He took his own step forward, leaving them glaring at each other from inches away.

"That was battle. That was in a fight," Katniss said. "But what you're describing, it seems to be crossing some kind of line."

"What line is that?" Gale demanded. "Dead is dead. The point is to make lots of the enemy that way while risking as few of ours as possible. The faster we do it, the faster the war ends and everyone goes home."

"The survivors get to go home, you mean." Katniss felt very cold, all of a sudden, seeing what the war had done to her friend. "So anything goes? I guess there isn't a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being."

"Sure there is. Beetee and I will be following the same rule book the rebels used when they ran the Andersonville prison."

Katniss and Gale just stared at each other. Each had made what they thought were irrefutable points; neither had swayed the other one bit.

"So that's it, then?" Katniss said. "Is that why you're here? To say good bye?"

"I was hoping not to," Gale said. His shoulders sagged as he looked away, unable to face his old friend. "When I came here, I was hoping you would come with me."

Katniss knew what he was implying. "Gale, don't do this..."

"Just think about it," Gale pleaded. "I don't know where things stand between you and the baker right now, but please think about it. Think about what this could mean for you, for your family. No more struggling. No more hunger. No more coal dust choking the life out of everything in sight."

Katniss gnawed on her bottom lip as she tried to sort through her thoughts. She could hear the passion in Gale's voice. He was acting like he had been given a second chance at life, and when she considered a lifetime spent in the same underground death trap that had claimed both their fathers she had to admit that maybe he had been. But she knew that she wouldn't play a role in his new life. At least, not the role he wanted her to play.

"You want me to marry you," she said bluntly. Sometimes the best strategy was a full-on frontal assault.

Gale blinked once before answering. "Yes."

"I told you before I don't feel that way about you," she said.

"You said you didn't feel that way about him, either, yet here you are."

"You knew I was wrong when I said that," Katniss said.

"And yet you said it anyway," Gale countered. "So how do you know you're not wrong about how you feel about me as well? How do you know you couldn't love me if you'd just give me a chance?"

Katniss sighed. Gale always had been too stubborn for his own good. It was one of the many ways they were alike. There was only one way she was going to dissuade him. "Gale, I'm married."

Gale struggled to form words. "What?" he finally choked out.

"Peeta and I married when we were discharged," she explained.

"That's ridiculous," he said, shaking his head. "If you're married, then where's your ri…" Gale's voice trailed off as he looked to Katniss's hand, and caught a glimpse of silver there.

Katniss fidgeted under his scrutiny. She had to fight the urge to tuck her hand behind her; the whole point was for him to see, after all. Instead she clasped her hands in front of her. Without realizing she was doing it, she began nervously fiddling with her ring.

Gale was surprised at how much the sight of Katniss wearing another man's ring affected him; he felt like he'd been gut-shot. He thought he'd made his peace with this possibility six months earlier at Petersburg. He thought he'd known what he was probably walking into when he'd had to come looking for Katniss at the Mellark bakery. But nothing had prepared him for the sight of Katniss, _his Catnip_ , wearing a wedding ring that he hadn't put on her finger.

Time seemed to stall. He stared. She fidgeted. Neither realized how long the silence had dragged on until Gale broke it. "You haven't ever thought of living anywhere but Panem, have you?"

"This is my home," Katniss said simply. "My mother and my sister are here. Whatever's left of my father is here. Peeta's family's legacy is right here. We want to raise our family here."

"Family?" Gale had to take a moment to let the idea sink in. "You're having a family?"

"Well maybe not right now, but it's only a matter of time at this rate," she said, then clamped her mouth shut when she realized what she was implying. After an awkward moment she added, "Peeta and I talked about it before... um, well, we talked about it and we decided we'd just… let it happen."

"And you're okay with that?" Gale asked.

"To tell you the truth it scares the hell out of me," she said. "But you should see Peeta with kids, he's amazing. It's like he was made to be a father. I want my children to have a father like that. He makes me want it."

Gale was silent for a moment. "You always said you didn't want a family. No husband and no children." He huffed out a humorless laugh. "I used to wonder what it would take to change your mind."

He already knew the answer, but it still hurt when she said it. "The right person."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Gale thought of the girl he'd met in the woods almost a decade earlier. The girl who kept everyone at arm's length. The girl who cared for no one and nothing but her sister. The girl who wanted nothing to do with marriage or children. The girl who would never have chosen to become something as pedestrian as the baker's wife. "You've changed, Catnip."

Katniss considered the man before her. A man dressed in a suit that wouldn't last ten minutes on a hunting trip. A man who was on his way out of town and out of her life. A man who had chosen to dedicate his knowledge and skills to the task of devising new and more efficient ways of killing large numbers of people, and was eager for the opportunity. "We both have."

Gale nodded in acknowledgement. Deep down they both knew what was coming next, but Gale was the one to voice it. "So, I guess this is goodbye, then."

Katniss tried to deny it. "Why does it have to be goodbye? You just got here. I took down a deer today, you should bring your family over and we can all have dinner together."

Gale just shook his head. "My train leaves this afternoon." It was a lie, he hadn't booked his return trip yet, but he wanted to get out of Panem as quickly as possible. As long as he was there the wound on his heart would still be fresh. He could make the rest of the arrangements for his family's move by mail. There had to be a train going _somewhere_ leaving the Panem depot that afternoon, and wherever it was going, he planned to be on it.

Katniss knew that Gale was lying, she could read him pretty well after so many years of communicating silently to avoid spooking their prey. But she let him do it. She knew he was hurting and she didn't want to make it worse for him than she already had, even if she herself was aching from the thought of losing her closest friend. "You'll write?" she asked, her voice small and weak.

"Yeah," he said, not knowing if he was being truthful or not. Katniss just nodded in reply, not trusting her voice anymore.

After another moment Gale gathered himself, straightening his shoulders and pulling himself up to his full height. But when he spoke his voice was surprisingly soft. "Goodbye, Catnip," he said, then paused just a moment before he turned and left the shop.

Katniss stood rooted in her spot. "Goodbye, Gale," she whispered at the closed door.

With her stare locked straight ahead, she didn't see when Gale paused at the end of the building and looked back, stealing one more look through the window at his one-time friend and would-be love, before resuming his walk away.

Her mind seemed to be unable to process what had just happened. Her friend Gale was gone, gone from Panem and gone from her life. And perhaps gone in other, more important ways as well. He was working for the army, building bombs. Instead of working long days in the coal mine where men were often killed in horrible accidents, he would be working for the army devising ways to kill men on purpose. The boy she had once met in the woods was well and truly gone, and even the man he had grown into had left her behind.

Katniss didn't quite understand what she was feeling. She would never have chosen differently, she could never have given Gale what he truly wanted. But she still somehow regretted it. She knew that this would have happened anyway, that even without the war she and Peeta would have found their way together, that even without Peeta she would still never have married Gale. But knowing that didn't decrease the loss she felt when she thought of her friend, or the regret that she didn't somehow fix their relationship before this break.

"Hey." Peeta's voice startled her back to reality. She could clearly see the concern on his face when she turned to look at him; she tried to offer him a smile to reassure him, but her face wouldn't cooperate. She didn't realize she was crying until he began gently wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Are you okay?" he asked softly.

Instead of answering, she threw her arms around him and pulled them together so tightly that he almost lost his balance, needing to steady himself with his cane before he could wrap his arms around her in return. Katniss closed her eyes and buried her face against his chest, taking comfort in all the small details of Peeta's embrace that she was sure would sound silly if she ever tried to explain them out loud: The feeling of his strong arms holding her firmly, yet with gentle reverence. The sound of his heartbeat thrumming against her ear. The soft feeling of his breath gently blowing against her hair. And of course, his smell. She inhaled deeply against his chest and let herself drown in the scent of her husband. He smelled of flour, of course; the smell was ingrained into every fiber of every garment he owned, as she was sure the smell of the woods was in hers. He smelled of cinnamon, from the cookies they always kept a full jar of on the counter by the till; ostensibly they were for sale like everything else in the shop, but far more of them were passed freely into the small hands of smiling youngsters than were ever bought and sold. He smelled of dill, the secret ingredient of the Mellark herb bread he must have been working on a fresh batch of back in the kitchen. He smelled of sweat, residue of a morning spent working hard and passing loaves in and out of the blistering ovens. He smelled of smoke, as he always did after a day of stoking the fires.

And he smelled of something else as well, a scent that was uniquely his own, something she had never been able to put any name to but _Peeta_. It was the scent of human comfort offered in the midst of inhuman devastation. The scent that soothed her nightmares even before she was fully awake. The scent that calmed her to sleep each night and the scent that welcomed her to each new day.

While she would never admit it out loud, it was her favorite smell. The smell of her husband. The smell of home.

She inhaled it again. Then two more times. Then she was ready to answer Peeta's question. "Yes," she said truthfully, nodding against his chest. Or was she nuzzling herself closer to him? "I'm okay now."

…..

_August 29, 1865_

They were sitting out back behind the bakery, sharing some tea and watching the sunset together, when Prim found them.

"What are you doing out so late?" Katniss asked with concern, standing to greet her. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine, Katniss," Prim said. Three years away and a marriage had done nothing to diminish Katniss's overprotectiveness. "Rory came home today."

"That's good." Katniss was relieved to hear that, but she could tell that it wasn't the news Prim had come over to tell.

"He proposed."

Katniss blinked. "Well, that's great. Congratulations, Prim," she said, and pulled Prim into a hug. In truth she had mixed feelings about the news. Of course she was happy for Prim, and she knew Rory would be a good husband to her. But she was still reluctant to let go of her little duck.

Which made Prim's next bit of news even harder to take. "He's working as an assistant to Gale in the War Department."

"But if he's-" It took Katniss a moment to catch on. When she did, she didn't want to believe it. "Y- You're going to live in the capitol? You're leaving?"

Words began pouring from Prim's mouth as her voice took on a pleading tone. "Please say you're okay with this. This is such a good opportunity for Rory. You know he couldn't do anything here except mine coal. They have schools in the capitol. I could train to be a real nurse. I'd miss you so much. Rory is so proud to be working with Gale. Please tell me you're okay with this. I couldn't bear to go if you're going to hate me for leaving. I'm really excited to see the city. Rory talked to some people-"

Katniss was torn between being happy for Prim and being despondent at the thought of losing her. She looked to Peeta standing beside her, praying that he would have an answer for her dilemma. In the look he gave her, he told her what she already knew she had to do. "Prim, of course I'll support you in whatever you want to do." Prim's face flooded with relief. "Just do me one favor?" she added.

"Anything," Prim said, already nodding her head in agreement.

"Don't go to the capitol and study to be a nurse."

As quickly as the relief had bloomed, it fell into disappointment. "B-But Katniss-"

"Study to be a doctor instead."

Prim's jaw fell open, her mind not able to keep up with the rapidly changing direction of her sister's approval. After a moment, she started laughing. By the time she pulled Katniss into another hug, she was crying as well. "I'll miss you so much. You're the best sister anyone could have asked for."

"No, you are," Katniss replied. "From the way you're talking, it sounds like you're leaving tomorrow," she said, worried that she was right.

"No, not that soon," Prim said, wiping her tears. "Maybe a month or two? Rory wants to find a house in the city first, plus we have to figure out where to have the wedding."

Katniss and Peeta exchanged a look. "If you're going to marry in the capitol, we may have a suggestion about that."

...

_October 21, 1865_

The remaining Hawthornes left Panem at the end of September. It was the second half of October by the time the Everdeens and the Mellarks took the Friday train to join them. By Sunday there was one less Everdeen making the return trip and one more Hawthorne staying behind.

"You and your bombs have taken my sister away from me," Katniss complained to Gale upon their awkward reunion. They spent most of the weekend tip-toeing around each other. Gale didn't know how to be around her husband and Katniss didn't know how to be around him without hurting him even more. So they avoided each other as much as they could as best man and maid of honor, and both focused their attention on the new couple.

The reunion between Rue and Thresh almost overshadowed the wedding itself. Rory and Gale and their new friends in the War Department had been able to pull some strings and get Thresh a weekend leave to attend the ceremony, as his unit wasn't scheduled for discharge until the new year.

Prim and Rue were thrilled to meet the man who had married Katniss and Peeta, and grilled Cinna for more details about the sparse ceremony as they prepared for Prim's. Most of the arrangements for the ceremony itself and the party afterwards had been worked out by mail beforehand, or else simply left in Cinna's capable hands. "I'm placing a lot of trust in this man you met once, Katniss," Prim had said with some trepidation as the date approached.

"Cinna won't disappoint you," Katniss had assured her. And indeed, he didn't. The ceremony wowed everyone, with the chapel decked out in colorful floral arrangements and Prim wearing a beautiful white dress Cinna and his friend Portia had sewn especially for the occasion. Katniss had never seen anyone married in a white dress before, though she had to admit that it looked exquisite when paired with the dark blue of Rory's dress uniform. Cinna explained to her that white bridal dresses were becoming very popular among the wealthy elite of the capitol city, ever since Queen Victoria of England had worn a white dress to her wedding a quarter-century earlier. _I thought we fought a war to ensure that we_ didn't _have to do whatever their queen does_ , Katniss mused, but she kept the thought to herself when she saw how much Prim loved the dress. "I figured your sister deserved the absolute best," Cinna said, and Katniss readily agreed with him there.

To Katniss and Peeta, who had married with only the pastor and a witness in attendance, the chapel felt crowded with two dozen people filling it. In addition to the three families and Thresh and Rue, several of Rory and Gale's colleagues from Weapons Development had come. Katniss withstood attempts at conversation by several officers' wives. Most of them ended quickly.

"What did you do during the war? I served on the Sanitary Commission."

"I served in the Army of the Potomac."

"Excuse me?"

"I spent most of the war sleeping in mud, in between the days when the generals asked me to go shoot at the rebels. What was it you said you did for the war effort again?"

"My husband is a captain," one insufferably proud woman declared.

"I was a major when I was discharged," Katniss replied casually.

She was also introduced to Colonel Beetee Hughes, who seemed entirely too much like a nebbish college professor to spend his days imagining how to kill large numbers of people. She even danced with Congressman Plutarch Heavensbee, who she got the impression was invited simply as a courtesy because his committee oversaw the department's funding. The congressman had to leave early to prepare for a late-night planning meeting.

Late in the day Katniss had had enough of the party. She was sitting with Peeta and Rue when Prim came over and joined them after Posy stole her new husband for a dance. "So, are you happy with your wedding, Little Duck?" she asked.

Prim's smile could light the world. "Yes, it's beautiful. You were right, Cinna is amazing."

"See, this is what a wedding is supposed to be," Rue said, giving Peeta and Katniss a pointed look. "Flowers. Decorations. A beautiful dress. _Guests._ "

Katniss mulled over the idea for a moment. "I don't know that there's any one right way to do a wedding. I think each person's wedding has to be right for them."

"Yeah, I agree," Peeta chimed in. "Our wedding just wouldn't have been the same without a sarcastic drunk."

Katniss and Peeta laughed. Rue just rolled her eyes. Prim decided she had indulged Posy long enough and went to reclaim her husband. After all, it wasn't Posy's wedding.

…..

_December 31, 1865_

Katniss sat cross-legged on the end of the work table in the bakery kitchen, her usual position when watching Peeta cook. "Is all of this really necessary?" she asked with a laugh.

"Yes!" Peeta declared with a happy smile. He shook the dispenser of powdered sugar in his hand, sending more clouds billowing into the air around him and drawing another peal of laughter from her. Katniss had never seen the ingredient before, at least none that wasn't already on a cake, and her primary reaction was to how wasteful Peeta was being with it. So far he had managed to cover nearly everything around them in a fine dust of sweetness, including their clothes, their hair, the table, and the fried pastries that were the ostensible targets of his antics. Katniss would periodically wipe some of the white dust off her trousers or the table surface and lick the sweetness from her fingertip. Whenever she did, Peeta would pause what he was doing and watch her intently. Katniss pretended as if she had no idea the effect she was having.

Apparently satisfied with his work, Peeta plucked one of the confections off the tray and eagerly held it out to his wife, as if she hadn't already eaten most of the first batch on her own. "It's tradition! Doughnuts and beer for good luck in the new year!"

Katniss tried not to laugh again as she took the proffered pastry. "Fine! I don't really _want_ to eat all these fried cakes, but if it's tradition..." Peeta laughed again, and snuck in a quick peck on her sugary lips before he moved to begin frying up another batch.

Peeta had introduced her to several new traditions during the seven months they'd been home. She knew it was a reaction to his family leaving; he was trying to recreate the sense of family he had lost, and in some ways to create a sense of family that his mother had never allowed. Katniss couldn't imagine the stern woman allowing the gluttonous overconsumption of alcohol and fresh pastries, for instance, not after hearing Peeta's stories of living on stale bread. Katniss indulged all of his new traditions, because they made him happy. And because so many of them involved eating, an activity which Katniss appreciated in a way that could only be understood by someone who was rarely assured of their next meal.

There was something else that would give Peeta a sense of family, she knew. Without conscious thought her hand went to her still-flat stomach. With the stresses of war fading and food reliably available to her for the first time in a decade, her monthly cycle was actually coming every month for the first time in her life. But every cycle meant another month in which she had failed to provide Peeta with the family he so obviously longed for.

"Do you think we'll have good luck in the new year?" she asked aloud.

Peeta paused in his work for just a moment as he processed her question. "I think we had pretty good luck in the old year," he said. "At least more good than bad," he added after a moment.

Katniss stopped to consider his words. Her natural inclination was to focus on the negative, and this year had had plenty. The horror of battle, great masses of people trying to annihilate each other. Their horrible wounds. Finnick's death, so close to victory and a trip home. Peeta had lost his leg, and his whole family had abandoned him. She had lost her sister, and her best friend.

But Peeta made her reconsider. He reminded her of everything they had gained, as well. They were home, and safe. They had won the war, and Gale and Rory and Thresh and so many others had all survived with them. They would always mourn the loss of Finnick Odair, but they had gained a growing friendship with Annie; she and the boys were planning a visit to Panem sometime after the spring thaw. Prim wasn't _gone_ , merely elsewhere. She was happy with her new husband, and ultimately she was just a train ride away. She was even reconnecting with her mother; without Prim to act as a buffer between them, they were forced to deal with each other, and their relationship had been steadily improving as a result. And she still thought getting Peeta's mother out of his life was a net improvement.

Most importantly, they had gained each other. She had never imagined her life going the way it had, had never wanted love or marriage. But now she couldn't imagine things happening any differently. A life without Peeta had become unthinkable to her. He was more than just her husband, he was her source of hope. He was her dandelion in the spring, the physical embodiment of the promise that life could go on, no matter how bad their losses. That it could be good again.

Katniss shook her head at herself. The idea was so alien to how she normally thought that it felt foreign in her head. It was sappy and clichéd and trite. Only Peeta could make her truly believe something like that. And he had.

She had to agree with Peeta; despite all the hardships and tragedy they had experienced, 1865 had been good to them overall. And she really thought that 1866 would be even better. In fact, she had one particular idea on how to begin the year right.

"Wasn't there another New Year's tradition?" she asked as Peeta pulled the final batch of doughnuts from the oil and took the pan off the fire. "Something about making as much noise as possible to ward off evil spirits or something?"

"Yeah, I've heard of that one before," Peeta said as he scattered the coals and tamped down the fire. Satisfied that the remaining flame would burn itself out without burning down the bakery, he turned to his wife and cocked an eyebrow in question. "Did you want to bang some pots and pans together or something?" he asked.

"No, that's not what I had in mind." Katniss spun herself around and hopped off the table, and slowly made her way to stand in front of her husband. Without really thinking about it she wrapped her arms around his neck to pull his face down to her level, and his arms naturally found their way around her waist in return. "I want you to make me scream," she told him, then she sealed their lips together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick historical note: While I haven't been 100% historically accurate in this story (pretty sure any military historian reading this would shoot me), it is actually true that the first modern-style landmines were used during the American Civil War. There had been buried explosives for as long as there had been black powder to explode, but they generally had to be set off by lighting a fuse or pulling a tripwire of some kind. The Civil War saw the first use of mines, called "land torpedoes" at the time, that were triggered by the pressure of an enemy stepping on them, and early models were indeed modified artillery shells.
> 
> With the war over and Everlark firmly in the HEA phase, this story is winding down. There's one more full chapter left, then a short epilogue. And the chapter is really kind if an epilogue itself, so really there's a long epilogue and then a short one.


	9. Chapter 9

_After_

Life quickly returned to normal in Panem after the war, but it was a new normal, and everyone knew it. The war had changed everything, even for the people who didn't fight in it.

Over the end of 1865 and the beginning of 1866, the soldiers Panem had sent off to fight trickled back home. At least, the survivors did. At least, most of them did. More than just Gale Hawthorne had become enamored of the places they had visited in war and decided to relocate there in permanently. They fell in love with the milder weather of Maryland or Virginia, or the energy of cities like Philadelphia or Washington. Some liked the army life and joined units still occupying the former Confederacy. Whatever their individual reasons, as men in blue returned to Panem, there were also some families who packed up and left.

Early in the spring, when it seemed that all the soldiers who were returning home had done so, a meeting was held. Men who had risked their lives together were reluctant to give up that bond just because the war had ended. The idea was proposed to form a club or organization, a way for veterans to maintain their wartime camaraderie in peacetime.

Dozens of people attended the initial meeting. There was dissension from some white soldiers when Thresh Seeder arrived, but most agreed that a war veteran was a war veteran. Thresh had risked catching a bullet just like everybody else there, and had earned his place in their club.

That sentiment was put to the test when right behind Thresh came Peeta Mellark, and his wife.

Katniss made no secret of her service, and few were so blind that they tried to deny her claims. Those who knew of her before the war all knew how skilled a hunter she was, and she certainly had the wounds and scars to show for her wartime service. Most simply ignored the idea of a woman soldier; whether or not Katniss deserved to be counted among Lincoln's boys was not a question that really affected their everyday lives, not even Katniss's. But now an answer was needed.

Some echoed their thoughts on Thresh, that a vet was a vet, but there were fewer voices for the sentiment in support of a woman. The most support came from Peeta and Thresh, obviously, as they were the only ones present who had actually seen her in action. The respect she had earned by helping feed the miner community over the years came into play; not one man from that side of town spoke again her. The loudest objections came from Brutus Rooba, the butcher's son, and a handful of merchant soldiers supporting him. They were a minority of the group, but a vocal one. Eventually, when it was obvious that no consensus would be reached anytime soon, everyone agreed to move on to other business and return to the question of Katniss's membership later in the meeting.

After another ninety minutes of dealing with organizational minutiae, much of the argumentative energy had gone out of the room by the time they came to the topic of choosing a name for their club.

"I've got an idea," Brutus spoke up on the topic. "Heard a tale in camp at Petersburg, about a guy they called the boy lieutenant. Dunno how true it is, but supposedly this kid got past the recruiters and somehow shot all the way to lieutenant. Anyway, a guy in his unit was talking about quitting. So this kid lays into him, basically tears him a new one, hurling fire and brimstone. He's just a kid! But he completely shames this poor guy. The line that everyone repeated was 'I ain't going home a quitter, I'm going home a victor.' And didn't we do just that? We didn't just fight the war, we won the war. Damn if we didn't claim victory, just like that kid said! So that's what I say, I say we call ourselves Victors."

There were nods and murmurs of agreement from throughout the group. Katniss and Peeta exchanged an amused look.

From near the back of the room came the voice of George Ripper, who had lost an arm retaking Fort Stedman. "I heard that same story," he said. "And now that I think of it, when I heard the story the boy lieutenant was said to be in the First Pennsylvania. Wasn't that your unit, Mellark?"

Peeta smiled. "Certainly was."

"So there any truth to the story?" Ripper asked.

Peeta and Katniss exchanged another look, silently communicating for a moment.

_You want to talk about this?_

_Sure, why not?_

"Yeah, some," Peeta said out loud.

"So was there really a boy lieutenant?" Brutus asked.

In response, Peeta just pointed to his wife. "That would be me," Katniss said.

"You," Brutus said with disdain. "You were the _boy_ lieutenant."

"We told everyone I was younger to explain why I never grew a beard," Katniss explained.

"No way were you a lieutenant," said Brutus.

"I was promoted to captain a week later," Katniss retorted. "And they bumped me again on discharge, so I'm officially retired as a major."

"Wait a minute," Ripper said. "So you're saying the boy lieutenant with the fiery temper... That was actually a girl on fire?"

Katniss took a breath and began to explain. "First of all, it wasn't actually someone from the First I was yelling at. It was... someone from another regiment. Someone I knew."

"Gale Hawthorne," Thom supplied. "Has to be. He spent more than a year trying to track you down, then one night Colonel Boggs sent him to carry a message pouch to some general, and he came back madder than a bear caught in a trap. And he never mentioned trying to find you again."

Other members of the 47th nodded their agreement with Thom's description of Gale's behavior, but the room was still quiet enough that everyone could hear Katniss groan. "Yes, thank you Thom. I was going to try to spare him the embarrassment of being associated with talk of desertion, but yes, it was Gale."

"Sorry," Thom said sheepishly.

Katniss shook her head. "Anyway, Gale recognized me in General Abernathy's camp. He wasn't talking about deserting himself, he was trying to convince me to quit. Said the war was too dangerous for a woman, and I should go home." She gave a quick pointed look to Brutus. "I told him that if he was so afraid of the danger then he could go home, but I was staying right where I was. I was fighting until either we won the war, or they had to carry me home cause I couldn't fight anymore." The intensity of conviction in her voice cowed everyone into silence as she paused, then shrugged. "In the end I did both, I guess. We won the war, and they had to carry me off the battlefield at the end."

When it came to a vote, the group unanimously agreed to call themselves the Victors. And when the subject of Katniss's membership in the Victors came up again, there were no further objections.

...

Demand at the bakery gradually expanded as returning soldiers settled in and resumed their normal lives, and their collection of bakery workers did as well. The first employee they added was Thresh, who felt he was imposing at the Undersees' but had been turned away when he inquired after work at the mine. He had no great passion for baking or for serving customers, but he was dedicated and reliable, and could be trusted to watch the shop on his own with no fear of him pocketing the daily profits. Rue continued working as a housekeeper for the Undersees, but spent a lot of her off hours at the bakery. She would often help out if things got busy while she was there, but she refused all attempts to pay her for her time. She was merely a guest, she insisted, not an employee. When she proved intractable on the subject, Katniss and Peeta conspired to send her and Thresh home with "surplus" bakery goods as often as possible.

Their next employee was more unexpected. Old Sae was an institution in the miner community of Panem. Nobody knew exactly how old she was, it seemed like she'd been around forever. After her husband died in a mining accident, she started selling stew out of her kitchen to support herself. Her wizardry at turning almost any meager offering into a hearty and filling stew earned her a loyal following, and the savory flavors she extracted from every scrap of gristle and bone earned her the nickname Greasy. Katniss had always given Greasy Sae first pickings when she sold her game, in exchange for a free bowl of whatever she made with it later.

When Sae's son and his wife both died in a typhoid fever outbreak, Sae was left with a granddaughter to care for. While selling stew out of her kitchen for a few pennies a bowl was enough to support one old woman, she was worried that she wouldn't be able to care for a child that way. It was Peeta who first suggested taking her on at the bakery as Katniss was telling him about her old friend's plight one evening. "If she can make a stew, I bet you she can make a pot pie filling."

The combination of Sae's delicious fillings with Peeta's buttery, flaky pie crusts was a big hit. The pies were much easier for the miners to take home with them than a bowl of stew, even some of the married men would come in for pies occasionally. Some miners were reluctant to come into town and buy their meals from a merchant, but loyalty to Sae and word-of-mouth praise from the Victors quickly overcame that hurdle.

One night, pausing in his work to simply watch the activity in his bakery for a minute, Peeta was struck by how much he genuinely liked the people he had surrounded himself with. The whole experience of running the place was markedly different than it had been working with his mother and his brothers before the war. They were an unusual bunch, to be sure: A one-legged man who had been abandoned by every blood relative he had, a woman soldier who scandalized merchants and miners alike with her men's clothing, a former slave who had asked to risk his life in the mines and been turned away, a girl who had suffered unspeakable abuse but was still as sweet and kind as they came, and an old widow who had lost so much yet still had a wry smile and a friendly barb for all comers. They were an unlikely team, and Peeta was thankful for every one of them.

When he voiced these thoughts to Katniss, it occurred to her why she found the situation so unusual. "I don't ever remember your parents having employees like this."

Peeta shook his head. "My mother would never have agreed to pay employees. They just put their kids to work." Then he became distracted by a customer, and missed the dark look that crossed his wife's face as she looked down at her still-flat stomach.

...

About a month after Katniss and Peeta celebrated their second wedding anniversary, Panem got another new resident.

"I sure as hell didn't want to hang around the capitol any longer than I had to!" newly minted civilian Haymitch Abernathy explained. "Weather's nicer down south, but they've got too many dry counties for my taste. I need somewhere I can rest easy, drink freely, and write my memoirs. At least this place has a decent bakery."

"Plus we can help you remember the parts you were too drunk for, right?" Katniss added.

Haymitch shoved another pastry in his mouth. "You've got me all figured out, Sweetheart," he said, spewing crumbs all over the counter.

A publishing company in New York City had offered the former General Abernathy quite a sum of money for penning his wartime memoirs. Apparently books written by former soldiers were a hot commodity. He had a somewhat unusual writing process: Katniss and Peeta had no idea how he worked on a normal day, but whenever there was a Victors meeting he would show up at the bakery early the following afternoon, nurse his hangover with one of Greasy Sae's pies, and have Peeta and Katniss repeat back to him whatever tales he had spun for the group the night before so that he could write them down. Somehow a book got written this way.

Haymitch was a hit among the Victors, as he was easily the most colorful member of the club. The other Panem veterans pressed him for stories of Katniss and Peeta from during the war, and he took great joy in making his former subordinates as uncomfortable as possible. Peeta and Katniss would retaliate the next day by making a lot of unnecessary noise as Haymitch winced and tried to write down whatever story they were retelling him.

To outside observers it seemed like they couldn't stand each other. Katniss and Haymitch in particular never had a kind word for one another, and Sae was honestly afraid that Katniss might shoot the older man one day. But the three were sewn together by their experiences. They had been through hell together, and it had forged a bond that that was unmatched, not even by the other Victors.

Still, that didn't mean they were nice to each other. One day Peeta and Haymitch were at the bakery counter talking when Katniss returned from hunting, and she couldn't help but tease the older man a bit with some news she had overheard in town that day.

"Hey Haymitch, I hear you're spending an awful lot of time with Miss Trinket lately. She let you clean her blackboard?"

Haymitch just grumbled a bit and shoveled some more venison pie into his mouth, but Peeta raised an eyebrow in interest. "Oh really? Cause I've heard that you've been spending a suspicious amount of time with the window Robertson." Maysilee Robertson was Hannah Undersee's twin sister. She ran the town's sweetshop, which still carried the sisters' maiden name of Donner.

Haymitch was only mildly perturbed, which was probably as much as he was capable of with the amount of alcohol he had consumed that morning. "Who I spend my time with is my own business. A gentleman never tells."

Katniss snorted. "Well, since you're no gentleman…"

Haymitch grinned. "Maybe not. But I was a soldier, and any good soldier knows how to keep secrets. You should know all about keeping secrets, _Kat_."

Haymitch's memoir project sparked something in Katniss's mind, but it took a while to germinate. It wasn't until two months later, while she was cleaning the front of the bakery with Greasy Sae, that the thought finally emerged as a fully-formed idea.

"Peeta," she asked later that evening as they were closing up for the night, "You know how Haymitch is writing about his experiences in the war? What if we did that, but for the company? Not a memoir of the war, but a memoir of all the people we fought with?"

Peeta stopped cleaning for a moment to think. "What would we write about? You mean biographies?"

Katniss knew what she wanted to say, but as usual she had trouble translating her thoughts into words. "Sort of, but more personal than just biographies. Anyone could list when people were born or where their hometown is. I want to record things like how Caesar's hair was so black that it looked blue in the firelight. How he always put the other guys at ease, even when he became company commander and was supposed to be bossing them around. How Finnick lost his cocky edge when he talked about his family. How Haymitch could be blackout drunk but still out-maneuver a Confederate cavalry regiment. The petty pissing matches Cato and Marvel would get into."

Peeta nodded as if he was getting her meaning. "Bill Leeg's pride in his twin daughters. How Dalton knew everything there is to know about cows. How Homes could shoot the dust off your boots at fifty yards." Katniss didn't know who Leeg was, he must have left the company before she enlisted. Peeta smirked as he teasingly asked, "How the company commander was a woman?"

Katniss ignored his last remark. "All the things that never make it into the history books. Stuff like that won't be in any general's memoir full of battle tactics, but it shouldn't ever be forgotten."

"I think it's a wonderful idea," Peeta said sincerely. "Even if nobody wants to publish it, I think we should do it just for ourselves. So we never forget all the small details. If we forget about the individuals, it becomes too easy to glorify war. I don't want to forget."

Katniss smiled. As usual, Peeta understood what she was trying to say even though she hadn't actually managed to say it. "Yes, that's it, exactly."

That night, they began making notes for their book. They kept a page of notes on each soldier they had served with, and when possible Peeta made a small sketch of their face. They told Haymitch about their idea, and even while finishing up his own memoir, he helped them out with details they hadn't known and men who had served before they had joined the regiment. He also took it upon himself to write entries about Katniss and Peeta, despite their insistence that they shouldn't be included in the book. "You two were part of that company just like all these other kids," Haymitch insisted. "You deserve to be remembered as much as any of them."

...

Everyone was surprised when Rue and Thresh announced their plans to marry, but maybe they shouldn't have been. The one thing Rue needed in a relationship above all else was someone she could trust absolutely, and she had that with Thresh. And the age difference between 14 and 20 didn't look as prohibitive at 20 and 26.

As hugs were exchanged after the happy announcement, Peeta held on to Rue for an extra moment. "Was I right?" he asked her.

He could hear the smile in her voice as she answered. "You were."

"Good." He released her with a wide smile of his own.

Rue and Thresh had few close friends in Panem, they weren't part of the miner community and were hardly embraced by the merchants. But every one of the Victors was there with their families for the marriage of one of their own. Peeta and Katniss served as best man and maid of honor, and Peeta imparted some key advice to his friend and employee during his speech at dinner.

"Thresh, you know you're like family to Katniss and me. And I know how much you care about Rue. But I have to warn you anyway: If you ever do anything to hurt that girl, my wife will shoot you. And I won't be able to stop her, she's always been faster than me, even back when I had two legs."

Everyone laughed heartily at the warning, but those closest to the couples knew that it wasn't entirely a joke.

...

Katniss and Prim wrote each other every week. Katniss proudly tracked the younger woman's progress through medical training. It was interesting to see where knowledge overlapped and where it didn't. The in-depth understanding of anatomy and physiology that Prim acquired through the schooling was far beyond anything their mother could have taught her, but at the same time there were herbal remedies that Prim had known practically since she could walk that the city doctors had no knowledge of. To Katniss it only reinforced how special Prim was; her baby sister would have all the medicinal knowledge of a country healer combined with the scientific training of a big city doctor. She would be the best physician ever.

Prim ran into a roadblock, however, when her schooling ended and it was time for her practical training to begin. Even after searching for more than a year, she couldn't find a doctor in the city who would accept her as an apprentice in their practice. The few who seemed willing to train a woman already had apprentices. Some claimed to have no problem with women as doctors, but said it was wrong for a married woman to train for a career outside her husband's home. She thought she'd finally succeeded when one older physician finally agreed to take her on, but a week later he rescinded the offer - he had mentioned his new apprentice to some of his male patients, all of whom steadfastly refused to be treated by a woman.

Prim, despite her generally positive personality, was feeling more and more despondent over the whole situation. She felt like she was letting her family down: her mother who had begun her medical education; her sister who had gone to war for her and encouraged her to study medicine; even her husband, who supported and encouraged her despite the ribbing he took from other men for her pursuit of a career, who had worked at war and destruction long enough to know he wanted no more of it, and looked forward to the day when he could assist his wife in healing rather than assist his brother in killing. At one point Prim seriously considered simply opening up a practice with just her classroom education - many of her male classmates had done so, and Prim had experience working with patients as a healer. But she knew she would be a better physician if she spent time learning from an experienced practitioner, so she persevered in her search.

It was just the day after receiving another of Prim's letters detailing her fruitless search when Katniss and Peeta found themselves sharing a drink with Dr. Marcus as a Victors meeting was winding down. Peeta had a way of listening that seemed to encourage people to unburden themselves to him, and that night Dr. Marcus was no exception. That night, his topic was his wayward children.

"I just don't know what I'm going to do," he lamented. "I'm old. I'm ready to step back, take it easy. But my three boys have all gone off to find their fortune in the city. None of them want to come back and take over their old man's small-town doctoring gig."

"Just because your sons don't want to take over doesn't mean you can't step back a bit," Peeta offered.

"But then who would take care of the people in this town?" Marcus asked. "No offence to you, Katniss, but your mother can only do so much. This town needs a real doctor, but I'd like it to be someone I know. Someone I'm sure I can entrust my patients to, you know? I don't know any of these kids coming out of these medical schools."

Katniss made a choked, croaking sound in the back of her throat. It didn't seem possible that things were aligning themselves so perfectly. "What if there was someone like that available?" she asked carefully. "Someone who's finished classroom schooling but wants some practical training before they take over a practice? Someone you know, who has already treated a lot of the patients in this town before?"

Marcus shook his head. "That sounds too good to be true. Where do you propose to find this magical creature?"

Two months later, Katniss met her sister at the train station. They gave each other a huge hug, and Katniss shared the news that their mother had confirmed just a week earlier. "You're just in time, Prim," she said. "I'm going to need you soon."

...

_A General's Tale: The War Memoir of Maj. Gen. Haymitch Abernathy_ sold rather well. Haymitch's irreverent style helped the book stand out among a glut of wartime memoirs. It sold well enough, in fact, that he successfully piqued the interest of the publishing company when he mentioned another remembrance project he was involved in.

There was some push and pull between the publishing company, looking to replicate the success of their other war books, and Katniss, who had very different motivations and was stubborn enough to stick to them. The editors in New York wanted to shift the focus of the book somewhat off of the soldiers themselves and more towards battle stories; Katniss flat out refused. Katniss wanted to keep her identity a secret and let the book stand on its own without using the story of a woman soldier to attract attention; the publishers thought she was joking. The company wanted to list Haymitch as the primary author of the new book to capitalize on the success of his first memoir; Haymitch demurred, insisting that this new project belonged to Katniss and Peeta and they deserved all the recognition for it. New York liked Peeta's sketches, but wanted fewer portraits of soldiers and more battle scenes. Katniss wouldn't even consider the former, but grudgingly accepted the latter.

Throughout the process, Peeta did his best to explain Katniss's ideas to the company representatives as diplomatically as possible. Haymitch was far less diplomatic when trying to get Katniss to agree to some compromises. Eventually, details were worked out, and a contract was signed.

_In Memory, Still Bright: The Fighting Men (and Woman) of Company L of the First Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, by Maj. Katniss Everdeen and Capt. Peeta Mellark, with a foreword by Maj. Gen. Haymitch Abernathy, acclaimed author of A General's Tale_ , the cover read. Katniss thought it was too cluttered, and would have shortened the title by 25 or 30 words, but decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting. Peeta beamed when they got their advance copy, and even Haymitch looked proud of them. "I just did a war book, but you two have made something really special," he said, sounding uncharacteristically sober and sincere.

The publishing company set up a twelve-city promotional tour for the book, which they called "A Celebration of Our Victory." The other Victors gave them plenty of grief over their victory tour, but they also had great appreciation for what they had done with their book; there was already talk of doing a similar project for the 47th, the unit most of the Panem victors had served in.

At first, New York wanted Katniss and Peeta to wear their uniforms at their tour appearances; there was nothing more sensational than a female soldier, and they wanted to capitalize on that as much as possible. Katniss refused; she didn't want to distract from the people their book was really about, and the thought of letting the publishers dress her up like a doll was nauseating. But the company was unusually insistent on the idea, even when Peeta added his own objections, and they argued back and forth about it for months as the book was finalized and the tour was planned in detail. As the tour date approached, and Katniss found out what had actually been causing the nausea she'd been experiencing for the previous few weeks, Peeta wrote to the company to explain that they would need some additional accommodations on the tour. The company agreed to all of Peeta's requests and immediately dropped their insistence that Katniss tour in uniform.

There was nothing more sensational than a female soldier, except perhaps for a pregnant female soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last full-length chapter of this story. There will be a short epilogue posted next week. Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

_June 30, 1876_

Their kids played in a wheatfield. Six-year-old Laurel, the happy but serious girl who reminded Katniss so much of herself before her father died that it hurt sometimes. Two-year-old baby Ray, the carefree boy who looked up to his big sister in a way Peeta had never had the luxury of doing with his brothers. Their laughing girl, running and skipping and enjoying the late summer breeze, her dark hair streaming behind her and her bright blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Their laughing boy, struggling to keep up on his chubby toddler legs, his gray eyes wide with merriment and his soft blond curls mussed as always.

Pregnancy had been difficult for Katniss. The baby was totally dependant on her, in a way that not even Prim had been before, and the woman who had faced three years of bloody battle was consumed with terror at the responsibility she suddenly felt. All she could think of were the legions of men she had watched mowed down. How could she hope to protect a baby in a world that chewed people up and spit them out on that kind of a scale? It took the combined efforts of her husband and her sister and her mother and her best friend Rue to help her through, and in the end the joy she felt at seeing her little girl swaddled in her arms was the only thing that could have ever convinced her to do it all again.

Her second pregnancy was easier on her, if not by much, but complications with the delivery left her weakened and confined to her bed for over a week. Katniss was devastated when Prim determined that the ordeal had likely left her unable to conceive again, but Peeta was relieved. He had already decided that another child was not worth his wife's life.

As the shock of Prim's pronouncement began to fade, Katniss came to understand how Peeta felt about it. They both knew of women who had borne many children only to watch half of them die in their cribs. They had both seen the life drained right out of some women under the burden of too many pregnancies, until one day a half-dozen young children were left motherless. Peeta saw their avoidance of either fate as nothing but a blessing, and while her disappointment never fully went away, as she so often did Katniss found herself persuaded to accept her husband's positive outlook.

In the end they were left with their two perfect children. A girl with the skill and intelligence of her huntress mother but the sweet disposition of her father. A boy who loved spending days in the kitchen with his father but who was sometimes cranky and impatient like his mother. Two children growing up surrounded by love and abundance the likes of which their parents could only have dreamed of in their younger days. Two children who never lacked for anything it was within their parents' ability to provide.

Two children who didn't know that the field where they played was once a killing field. Two children who didn't realize that the reason they were allowed to run free like this was because their parents were too overwhelmed with dark memories to chase after them right now.

Katniss and Peeta couldn't quite explain their desire to revisit Gettysburg. It had been a turning point in the war, yes, but the battle held no particular significance for them. This wasn't where they'd lost Finnick, or Caesar, or Doc Aurelius. This wasn't where they'd camped for nearly a year, or where they'd almost died, or where they'd been married.

Maybe it was because it was the only major battle they'd fought close to home. Maybe they just needed to visit _a_ battlefield, and as they traveled east to spend the national centennial with the Odairs in Philadelphia, Gettysburg was – sort of – on their way. They had purposely avoided the ten year anniversary gathering a few years earlier, but here they were now, drowning themselves in memories of war.

Their kids didn't really understand about the war. What child could, who wasn't in one? Miss Trinket taught about it in school, and their daughter knew they were involved. Her questions were just beginning, and soon the boy's would follow. They'd have to explain to them that Mommy and Daddy had killed people. They'd have to explain that Uncle Thresh and Auntie Rue used to be treated as property, not as people. They'd have to explain why Daddy had a funny leg, why Mommy had that scar running up her forehead and the clump of ruined tissue on the inside of her elbow. Why it was that the Mellark children were sometimes woken by their parents' nightmares instead of the other way around.

The idea of explaining everything terrified Katniss sometimes. She prized her children's innocence, a commodity her own childhood had been in short supply of. Peeta tried to reassure her: that every child has to learn about the world at some point and it was up to them to do it right. That they could explain things without shattering that protective bubble of innocence, that they could make them understand in a way that would make them braver. One day they would show their kids their book and tell them stories of their fallen friends, of the fine and not-so-fine people who gave everything to help produce the world they now lived in.

As Katniss leaned back against her husband's hard chest and relaxed into his embrace, as she watched her happy and carefree children chase each other across the field, she took comfort that that day was not today. Today, her kids played in a wheatfield, oblivious to the evils, however necessary, that once took place there. Today, she and Peeta only had to support each other. Something they'd been doing for a long time now, and something they would always do.

Always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! It's over!
> 
> This is the first time I've ever completed a WIP, and I have to admit I'm kind of emotional about it. I actually can finish stories! Of course, it took me 15 months to publish a ten-chapter story, so maybe I shouldn't get too full of myself. :)
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read this story, and especially everyone who was kind enough to share your thoughts in a review, comment, or message. You guys are awesome, and I can honestly say that this story wouldn't exist as it is without your support.
> 
> If you enjoyed this story, I hope you'll check out some of my other work, or come bug me on Tumblr. Right now my next writing goal is to make sure that this story remains my only completed WIP for as short a time as possible. After that, I have other stories to complete, other ideas I want to write… and if the stars align themselves, I might be revisiting this particular AU towards the end of the year.


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